Stunned, saddened, and stirred by powerful film

Rating: 7/10 (7 January 2007)

I left the theater initially just arguing with my dad that the tale isn't so hopeless as he thought. We talked for a little while, and then shortly after we got home, I turned to him and had to give him a hug. The vision in this film is very disturbing, I suspect, because we live in wartime.
Our country is in the midst of a war that we are not certain how to stop, and there are other conflicts in the world around us that we haven't committed to ending. Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia-there are many cases right now of desperate armed conflict much like what we see in this film.
It is my sincere hope that HOPE can be revived in these regions: there are relief workers in all of these areas and peace workers fighting for it. Brave groups like Medicines Sans Frontieres, the UN, other NGOs, and parts of our government that are trying to instill hope and foster peaceful solutions. I don't know what can be done in the Sudan, but thinking of people like Don Cheadle's character in Hotel Rwanda, one start is trying to just save lives and say "Enough bloodshed."
Even where I live here in New York, we have youth that are used to violence in their lives, along with drugs and teenage pregnancy. However at the same time, in the school where I work, they find hope to go to college, get out of the neighborhood, and/or maybe even change it for the better. I don't think we can call ghettoes and slums lost causes, because once we do all that is left is to cut ourselves off from them like severing limbs.
If we do cut ourselves off from our local and international war zones and conflicts, we will end up creating the kind of apartheidist society envisioned in Children of Men where force is the only answer anyone has anymore. The infertility problem in Children of Men is more of a symbol than a science-fiction creation: it stands to me for a lack of hope, a resignation: King spoke of that death of the spirit that comes when we stop fighting for what we believe in, and to King, that meant NONVIOLENT action against all oppression.
If this film serves as a wake-up call, it will do some good. At the very least, it is a potent well-acted suspenseful allegory. SPOILER: It is enough that watching this film, you honestly believe that gunmen could hush in awe at the sound of a baby's cry.
Let us heal the broken parts of our world.