Graphics from the near future: Children of Men

25 December 2016 (Desdemona Despair) – Don’t tell Desdemona that you haven’t seen Children of Men. This film is pure doomer porn, executed with the deft and utterly convincing cinematic touch of the great Alfonso Cuarón. Hie thee to the nearest video store / Red Box / Netflix queue and consume immediately.

It’s 2027, and global civilization has collapsed, causing enormous waves of refugees to flood into the United Kingdom, the last functioning nation state. The masses are caged in the street as the authoritarian government clamps down on “illegals.”

Director Cuarón uses production design in an attempt to make his audience “recognize the present,” and he demands that this design fade into the background – he calls this scheme the “anti-Blade Runner.”

Cuarón told the Seattle Times in 2006, “the stuff that you see on the screen is nothing but a reference of stuff that has been happening on this planet in the last five years or so.” And like Desdemona, he is not offering a cautionary tale, because “I don’t believe there’s time for caution.”

Promotional graphics follow the design scheme of the film: incidental artifacts that form the background and fade into it.

Here’s Battersea Power Station, complete with Pink Floyd’s flying pig. It houses the “Ark of the Arts,” where a few of the world’s rescued masterpieces are stored. One of the recurring themes in Children of Men is the abject failure of the 1960s Hippie revolution, with ‘60s music used to wickedly ironic effect, notably “In the Court of the Crimson King” for this scene.

“We couldn’t save La Pietà,” says the curator, cheerfully.

Clive Owen dines beneath Guernica.

Pink Floyd’s flying pig over Battersea. The failure of ‘60s idealism hovers over everything.

Pot-smoking hippies have been forced into hiding by the brutal government crackdown on civil liberties.

1960s Hippie idealism has been replaced by doomsday cultism.

Future history forgotten: the production team had to create an entire history of events leading up to 2027 and then make that history recede into the wallpaper.

Religious imagery pervades nearly every frame in Children of Men, but Cuarón is not advocating religion as a remedy for human extinction. In an interview with Christianity Today, Cuarón “confirmed this belief that we should place our hope not in God, but in ‘the next generation.’” As Desdemona readers know, more humans are resorting to prayer as the world falls apart around them; we also know that God will not save us.

Quietus: “You Decide When”. At the sunset of the human species, the suicide drug, Quietus – slickly marketed, with a catchy three-word slogan – provides the only empowerment available to most: the power to decide when to die.