Even back in 2006 upon its release, there was chatter amongst many of us that there was a ... politically motivated reason it didn’t get the attention and accolades it clearly earned.
naah - it wasn't publicised very well A shame - because its dismal vision of the "future" is largely the one we're now living in I remember at the beginning of lockdown, walking into the supermarket and seeing signs on the floor everywhere ... the very first thought that crossed my mind was "It's happened! - This is just like Children of Men!" That was my first thought at the horror - a realistic dystopian movie from 2006 (in which a pandemic is perhaps responsible for secretly making all human females [or males] infertile)
Probably due to political reasons. Right out of the gate, Francis Fukuyama describes Children of Men's Great Britain as a place "that has decided to deport all illegal aliens" that has "turned into a huge concentration camp" and then immediately correlates that with Brexit and "the rise of Donald Trump", So I'm sure that most fans of the movie who haven't been brainwashed by Left-wing propaganda are probably thinking "great movie, shitty commentary -- next".
@@amish-ish but , but , but ......... I'm not a leftist and I can see how these 2 events can lay grounds for a future like that . And before u start at me , I'm a hardcore believer of small government , ;less taxes , yet , Donald Trump is a con artist and a wannabe dictator . thank you
@@8OBO8 lol not really it didn't show the illegal immigrants and leftist revolutionaries as good people. They were the bad guys from the first moment in the movie when they blow up the coffee shop..
"What is unique about the dystopia in Children of Men is that it is specific to late capitalism... Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavon Zizek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism." -Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism.
THIS. Honestly, I'm actually pissed off that Fukuyama has the gall to call this movie his favorite when he not only doesn't understand it, he's a reason why it's prophetic in the first place.
@@lozoft9 dude fukuyama didnt cause late capitalist globalized liberal hegemony to exist, he just wrote about it lmao. Mark Fisher himself literally wrote lots of praise about fukuyama and said that his essay on the end of history was haunting and inherited by Nietzschean spectres... not triumphalist, but unhappy at the end of history.
@@lozoft9 yes fukyumama was such a prick to talk about capitalism’s putative triumph as the ‘end of history’ meaning dialectic, that from now on the boot of capitalism will smash humanity’s face as O’Brien has it in Orwell’s 1984, forever. The whole point of CoM is that capitalism provides no reasons for a society to continue to function and the progress of capital is to convert every human activity into mere commodity for the sake of profit. The sterility afflicting humanity in PD James’ novel is a metaphor for the bankruptcy of society dedicated to mere commerce, where all creativity is directed away from solving problems and only to the pursuit of an elusive security (resorting to utter brutality), with decadent individual consumer pleasure as a side course or soporific, resulting in a strong option for pharmaceutical suicide. Fukuyama is a major asshole with no humility and a shallow notion of history and teleology.
Has also been my favorite film since a friend had a little bootleg screening for a few of us in 2006. I watch it once a year and assess how ... much less surprised I am. My favorite aspect is the hoarding of art and animals because they will live on.
Loved his description of Theo and Kee as the holy family. Notice how in the critical scene where the fighting stops to hear the baby, it's the older women - those who remember what a baby sounded like - who are weeping with joy. Everyone else is stunned at what they see. The title is so appropriately titled. Children of Men - it is the greed of men that instills war, hate, anger throughout this movie. The female characters are maternal, caring, giving their life for this child. Ex: Julian, Miriam, Kee, Marichka, the Romanian gypsy women.
you want to hear my takeaway? Look at the name on Theo's pullover. That's my name... DON That movie is about Bar Bar and Simarana, the i.e. Boatman. Why? Well, you'd have to do some research, but so is the Matrix. Theo = TheO(ne) Neo = the ONE etc. There's a couple of other direct ties between these two movies (Matrix and CoM).
I agree with Fukuyama that we need a future. However, I think Fukuyama's own thinking as it is expressed in the "End of history" is the real threat to the very concept of future. Fukyama reveals this also in this short video, when he warns us that society perhaps won't "...grow. That next year is gonna be bigger, more buildings and more stuff to do and more technology, Actually, a lot of places that isn't happening, nations are going in reverse." This is Fukyama's conception of the future; more of what we have, more liberal capitalism, more "big buildings and technology". The problem is however that we are incapable of imagining any other future than this one. The current social-democratic liberal capitalism is unbearable; it is unsustainable, incapable of distributing goods equally to the whole world, and most alarmingly; incapable of fixing itself. The stage of politics, at which we were supposed to be able to find solutions to these problems, has become a shit-fest of polarized, pointless bickering and identity-politics, where the main concern is whether to be PC or not. At the same time, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are amassing un-equalled influence on our daily lives, paying little-to-no taxes (undermining the very system of taxing. In all honesty, both the left and the right's policies on taxation are inherently flawed and retarded as they are incapable of dealing with the problem of international tax-evasion) and in control of what will become the most fundamental aspect of our infrastructure in the future. In "Children of Men", the future is doomed because of some unexplained fertility-drop. In our world, the future is doomed because we are incapable of imagining anything else than re-producing this broken system, and bickering about how we behave in conversation while we do it. The thought of Zizek is really interesting on this topic (he accidently also loves this film)
people will always multiply, it's a case of who, if you look at japan as he said, its birthrate is in decline, most white people with high iq also have an average of 1.5 kids. makes you wonder about immigration and the true reason behind it....
This current government is unsustainable. It’s spending and burrowing is unsustainable. It’s Trade and Budget deficits are unsustainable. It’s never ending proxy-wars and regime changes are unsustainable. It’s tax burden on the real economy over the long term is unsustainable. Its foreign policy to police the world is unsustainable.
i love your 2nd sentence. It explains why it took so long for me to see this vid. I am quite familiar with his work. Now with COVID-19 we can see how great this movie was and always will be. View Zizek's review of the film on youtube. (that came from the DVD).
So, I see some hate for this guy. I've never heard of the man. Anyone feeling generous and want to give us a crash course? I googled him but everything I read seemed abstract, conceptual, and not likely to piss off everyday normal people one way or the other.
He wrote a rather thorough and nuanced book about Hegel, and epistemological and political concepts, etc. But most people haven't read it. People think he's dumb because they think his book justifies 'liberalism' or 'neoliberalism'. Spoiler alert, he didn't and doesn't. Fukuyama is a Nietzchean anyway.
Fukuyama's thesis was just basically the same thesis that Alexandre Kojeve said, and he in turn got it from Hegel. It's a technical philosophic argument that only really makes sense to people who have studied German philosophy. But basically reason/understanding of reality changes from 'culture' to 'culture', from 'society to society', but there's a progression of understanding eventually, so that the society's understanding of what is true is reconciled with what is really true. The ending of this is modern liberal society that understands reality as being constructed by individuals, and hence a free society of individuals. In other words a liberal secular society where laws are made by man, and only by man (i.e. not by the Gods). This is materialist, liberal society. The Hegelian argument was that this arrived with Napoleon. Fukuyama basically just advanced the view that now finally with Marxism being discredited, Hegel's argument is finally actualised, as there's no other practical alternative to liberalism. BUT this is only the surface of Fukuyama's argument. You don't have to dig deep to see that he suggests a philosophical critique of this argument in his own book. His own title even says it. "The End of History and the Last Man" 'The Last Man' is a concept from Nietzsche. And Nietzsche was the anti-Hegelian par excellence. People who criticise Fukuyama as a blind liberal are stupid, for they don't even realise that he provided a stinging critique of liberalism IN HIS OWN BOOK. But people never read stuff. And when they do they don't read properly.
A lot of uneducated and willfully ignorant people from both the right and left (but predominantly the right) have created a boogeyman of neoliberalism and then completely misinterepreted Fukuyama's works as being a 'globalist shill'.
An ideologue of Postmodernism, who proposed "The End of Historty", proclaiming and celebrating the final fall of socialism and the victory of capitalism as the culmination of the "cold war".
People like Francis Fukuyama with his "end of history" tripe are the reason why this movie is prophetic. He is the proverbial partisan who instead of delivering hope like Theo, is represented by Theo's cousin and Luke, self-medicating with their preferred ideology. He can't even bother to mention climate change, something our current system is completely unable to address and that the situation in the movie clearly alludes to.
Climate Change is clearly not a problem in this movie - when the entire population of the human race will be gone in 75 years. The reason we should take climate change seriously is for the sake of future generations. In Children of Men, there is no future - so just have as much fun as you can before the inevitable happens!
I think comparing the anti immigrant sentiment in the movie vs anti illegal immigrant in the US today is very unfair. In the movie, literally every place is in complete despair except Britain. Not the case today.
Yeah if the world was collapsing in mexico and south america then we should seriously consider helping displaced people. The problems that are the there right now can be fixed with changes in government
@@Mattdotnfo In the novel, the fertility crisis began in 1994, but Fukuyama was speaking about the film. He says, "the premise of the movie is that the last child was born in something like 1996".
@@intello8953 No, he's not. And even if he was he'd be incorrect as the fertility crisis begins in 1994 in the book. In this video he says, "the premise of the movie is that the last child was born in something like 1996".
@@michaelspears7116 theoretically, the infertility outbreak wouldn’t happen completely instantly. Babies would just start to be conceived less and less until there were none left. It’s reasonable for there to be a 2 year span between the beginning of the crisis and the last child born.
World is overpopulated. Though I think white Westerners have less babies compared to Eastern countries like Pakistan, India bangladesh and middle east. Whites will become minority in their own countries
The birthrate is falling rapidly all over the world. In the Middle East, it has been cut in half in one generation, and in Iran, it has gone from 6 kids per woman in 1980 to less that two today, just like the West. Europe is in no danger of being replaced. The world is not overpopulated. We have enough food for ten billion people *today* - we just don't distribute it evenly to the 7.6 billion we have. The world population isn't expected to reach nine billion until 2040. It's slowed down with incredible speed.
As I watch The Children of Men today the poignancy is nearly difficult for me to hold to myself. I prefer to think of a meaning related to piquant, sharp.
Trump's election and Brexit are not dystopian scenarios this man romanticizes. Regardless of who is the USA's president or the UK's global affiliation will not harm us like it did in 1929. As a rationalist and a moderate, children of men is a masterpiece for its own reasons. The movie is humanizing. Its continually shocking, while keeping the audience grounded. The cinematography is impeccable. The long running cuts of film we witness are inspiring, stressful and exhilarating. The use of music is shattering and emotionally inspiring beyond compare. Some woman is having a child in a hopeless world, its like witnessing Joseph watch Mary without the keys and notes of a Hollywood cliche. It puts on display our judgements and hopes and hostility to each other. This terrifying and authentic film puts our desires and fears on display; our violence and compassion; "a world without childrens' voices." You get to first hand see what innocence and birth can do to a world without. What gets me the most is during the tank battle when the soldiers in the building realize there is a baby present. They kneel and cross their hearts at the sight that some goodness may still exist. Something Mr. Fukuyama doesn't realize is in all of us. It doesn't require some arbitrary population to inspire or whatever he is pushing upon us. What matters is what we can do for ourselves. it doesn't matter if we can still make babies, it matters if we can care for those babies and give those babies the god given opportunity they deserve.
As a """rationalist""" maybe you can use your """"deep"""" knowledge to realize he is referring to the themes of immigration and xenophobia when he compares the film to modern days Trump And Brexit. and for the rest of your wannabe thesis you wrote there, I just have to say that You sir, Are a pontificating ass.
Key phrase "implausible behavior". I always thought this movie was full of implausible behavior. If it was about population decline owing to the unaffordability of sustaining the nuclear family model it might resonate. Especially as the result of democratic governments captured by the billionaire class who as a numerical minority have every reason to hate and fear rule by a majority. The fact that infertility has no defined cause, it skirts around the fact that as FF points out, populations are in decline and not replacing themselves because it is too expensive. There is plenty of money but when it is concentrated into the hands of a fraction of a single percent that imbalance is bound to be reflected by a declining society tearing itself apart as the lords and masters laugh on from above. Characters in the movie seem remarkably incurious about the causes and potential solutions of infertility. Populations are in decline because the CEOs need hundreds of millions in pay while the lowest paid workers, who greatly outnumber the CEO receive subsistence wages. This is by design. It's not difficult to understand why the movie fails to address this, instead chalking up infertility to some reason that ultimately 'doesn't matter".
It’s clear that in this movie universe, the vast majority of these immigrants are only illegal because they have no feasible means of legally becoming British citizens and that this hindrance is purposeful. It’s not as though all of these people coming from all around the world are all trying to dodge taxes or something.
@@walkerfloyd7145 in the film Britain is on the verge of social collapse itself with terrorist bombings being commonplace and being barely worthy of comment when the main character is almost the victim of one. The police are all heavily armed - which is completely alien to most British people (Northern Ireland excepted). The state has resorted to heavily authoritarian measures, the promotion of cheap thrills such as gambling and state sanctioned 'quietus' in order to delay the inevitable and allow the people remaining in Britain to have relatively comfortable lives unlike the rest of the world which I assume mostly operates on the level of the 'Lord of the Flies' as indicated by 'baby' Diego's murder. Letting in potentially billions of people is just not a viable option for the government as the additional burdens this would place on society and the economy would tip the already fine balance and lead to yet another societal collapse. Not to mention that even with population decline there would be almost nowhere to house even a few million more people. I like the film but I feel it is a failed aesop in this regard.
How many of the people in these comments actually have their own children? It doesn't seem like a lot. Lots of opinions on children, not a lot of waking up three times a night to feed a wailing child and running on fumes the next day because you're so exhausted. That tends to ground you in the realities of the present moment.
People like Francis Fukuyama don't have to compete with immigrants for their jobs, or their housing, or the education of their children. Somehow, the working classes, always pay for the vicarious 'generosity' of the elite.
Maybe the world should just think our planet is very small very small let me say that one more time we live on a tiny planet that cannot support the abundant life that people keep bringing into it so whether we need to put a law on how many children a person can have or the powers to be are just going to try to figure out a way to get the hell away from this planet and find somewhere else to live maybe a bigger one to help a soul survivor that way we can continue our constant gorging on the environment around us without a care in the world where we came from or how we got here in the first place the only way a great son or a great daughter is brought into the world is a great father and a great mother dad and I was a great child doesn’t see color race they just see The world that they were brought up and for those who don’t understand I am not going to apologize because it is not my place if we do not learn from this life we cannot teach our children any different than what we know now they’ll be no good the same ignorance will just perpetuate itself throughout the eons is there an answer absolutely not not for this world
because I dream about vandalizing shops when I am not worrying about Trump turning the UK into a concentration camp. Give me a break. Great movie, but not for these reasons.
Thought it'd be interesting to hear what a guy I deeply disagree with has to say about a film I love. Turns out he's just fucking boring - everyone should go watch the Zizek video about it.
Prequel to the Sequel No my friend, trump is normalizing this detention of individuals and what he described could very well be the future. You may not see this as a bad thing, but it doesnt make it false.
Prequel to the Sequel Exactly my thoughts, smh. If anything, id say the movie more accurately depicts a future where western countries have open border immigration policies and those countries have become overcrowded.
this movie was a 10 years spoiler alert for us , now more than ever where Europe has a refuge crisis, more refugee camps , and it's also a ruminant of the 1800 , 1900 London, something like out of Charles Dickens novels coupled with modern day concerns like pollution, sacristy of resources and climate change, on top of none existence regulations for big corporations ( we see chemical waist and pollution everywhere , probably what led to the infertility problem ? ) , add to that the cruelness of a fishiest system, immigrants put in cages like back during the cold war when Germany was still divided. it's everything that was wrong with us along with everything modernly wrong with us and everything that Will be wrong with us in the future .
Neckbeard -- there is a good commentary on the relevance of the film: www.vulture.com/2016/12/children-of-men-alfonso-cuaron-c-v-r.html Cuaron, the director, mentions that that is his express intention -- to let the viewer bring in with him what he needs to interpret it. Cuaron dislikes explicit moralizing or even obvious symbolic statements that lead to specific interpretations.
You don't need to be religious to appreciate and reference religious motifs within art, it can be a very interesting thing to build on top of and utilize because those symbols are so deep within our social structure and culture :)
This is pure propaganda btw. Comes out right before the election to show you what your world will look like if Donald Trump becomes president. Smh, its so wrong. Great fucking movie though!!
not seeing the movie...this seems to be a movie that the creator's mentality is the same as his/her predecessors creation apocalyptic type of movies...just nothing more than blah-blah-blah-blah pretentiousness....most of these type of movies are bland and repetitious ….I wish these movies have little bit more unexpected credentialbilities of twist of surprise elements...…the
I would give it a shot anyway, you might be surprised. It's quite a unique movie that has great cinematography, combined with real tension based action and a gripping story. It really pulls off a gritty, depressing dystopiadystopian societ very well. But in a very realistic way, as opposed to most other movies set in similar environments. The world seems so fluid and lived in, there's a constant mess of people and situations going on throughout the scene.
Loved the movie, but to be political it actually shows how bad things could get with mass migration great cities will fall. Nothing new it has happened before.
His favourite movie but he doesn’t know when the last child was born, despite one of the first scenes showing 2009-2027…. Seemed all he cared about was bashing trump and Brexit…
Francis Fukuyama is totally discredited. He wrote a book called the "end of history,"because he thought capitalism had 'beat' socialism after the cold war. So yeah this guy is 1000% discredited, and nothing he ever days should ever be taken seriously if you're a human with critical thinking skills
Regardless of political believes, I think that this is one of the most underrated movies of all time.
It's in the 10 best movies of all time if not the top of the new millenium
Even back in 2006 upon its release, there was chatter amongst many of us that there was a ... politically motivated reason it didn’t get the attention and accolades it clearly earned.
naah - it wasn't publicised very well
A shame - because its dismal vision of the "future" is largely the one we're now living in
I remember at the beginning of lockdown, walking into the supermarket and seeing signs on the floor everywhere ... the very first thought that crossed my mind was "It's happened! - This is just like Children of Men!"
That was my first thought at the horror - a realistic dystopian movie from 2006 (in which a pandemic is perhaps responsible for secretly making all human females [or males] infertile)
@@jazzx251 ...i felt and feel the same.
Irregardless
"Doesn't matter, it's all over in 50 years" I felt that.
surprised that this video doesn't have more views, I loved this movie and I got the sense that lots of people on youtube did too
Probably due to political reasons. Right out of the gate, Francis Fukuyama describes Children of Men's Great Britain as a place "that has decided to deport all illegal aliens" that has "turned into a huge concentration camp" and then immediately correlates that with Brexit and "the rise of Donald Trump",
So I'm sure that most fans of the movie who haven't been brainwashed by Left-wing propaganda are probably thinking "great movie, shitty commentary -- next".
@@amish-ish Did we watch the same movie? It clearly portrayed these left wing sentiments. If you understood the movie you'd probably hate it lol
@@amish-ish but , but , but ......... I'm not a leftist and I can see how these 2 events can lay grounds for a future like that . And before u start at me , I'm a hardcore believer of small government , ;less taxes , yet , Donald Trump is a con artist and a wannabe dictator . thank you
@@8OBO8 lol not really it didn't show the illegal immigrants and leftist revolutionaries as good people. They were the bad guys from the first moment in the movie when they blow up the coffee shop..
"What is unique about the dystopia in Children of Men is that it is specific to late capitalism... Watching Children of Men, we are inevitably reminded of the phrase attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavon Zizek, that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism." -Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism.
THIS. Honestly, I'm actually pissed off that Fukuyama has the gall to call this movie his favorite when he not only doesn't understand it, he's a reason why it's prophetic in the first place.
@@lozoft9 reee
@@lozoft9 dude fukuyama didnt cause late capitalist globalized liberal hegemony to exist, he just wrote about it lmao. Mark Fisher himself literally wrote lots of praise about fukuyama and said that his essay on the end of history was haunting and inherited by Nietzschean spectres... not triumphalist, but unhappy at the end of history.
@@lozoft9 yes fukyumama was such a prick to talk about capitalism’s putative triumph as the ‘end of history’ meaning dialectic, that from now on the boot of capitalism will smash humanity’s face as O’Brien has it in Orwell’s 1984, forever. The whole point of CoM is that capitalism provides no reasons for a society to continue to function and the progress of capital is to convert every human activity into mere commodity for the sake of profit. The sterility afflicting humanity in PD James’ novel is a metaphor for the bankruptcy of society dedicated to mere commerce, where all creativity is directed away from solving problems and only to the pursuit of an elusive security (resorting to utter brutality), with decadent individual consumer pleasure as a side course or soporific, resulting in a strong option for pharmaceutical suicide.
Fukuyama is a major asshole with no humility and a shallow notion of history and teleology.
@Dr. Buster Cheeks M.D., Proctologist at Stanford Žižek is DA BALLZ and fukyumama is a tool.
I loved this movie. So many surprises and great performances. Michael Cain's character and performance of it is beautiful.
Has also been my favorite film since a friend had a little bootleg screening for a few of us in 2006. I watch it once a year and assess how ... much less surprised I am. My favorite aspect is the hoarding of art and animals because they will live on.
greatest movie ever made
Certainly one of them
What an amazing interview !!!!!!!
'Couldn't save La Pieta!'
smashed up when we got there
I saw this movie 3-4 times in the theater when it came out, incredible film
Children of men is my favorite movie too.
Just watched children of men again. Still my favorite movie of all time.
Underated classic
Loved his description of Theo and Kee as the holy family. Notice how in the critical scene where the fighting stops to hear the baby, it's the older women - those who remember what a baby sounded like - who are weeping with joy. Everyone else is stunned at what they see.
The title is so appropriately titled. Children of Men - it is the greed of men that instills war, hate, anger throughout this movie. The female characters are maternal, caring, giving their life for this child. Ex: Julian, Miriam, Kee, Marichka, the Romanian gypsy women.
Written by the same woman who wrote the Jane Austen murder mystery Death Comes to Pemberley. P.D. James was an extraordinarily talented author.
So interesting to hear different takeaways from this brilliant movie.
you want to hear my takeaway? Look at the name on Theo's pullover. That's my name... DON That movie is about Bar Bar and Simarana, the i.e. Boatman. Why? Well, you'd have to do some research, but so is the Matrix. Theo = TheO(ne) Neo = the ONE etc. There's a couple of other direct ties between these two movies (Matrix and CoM).
COVID 19 Anybody?
I think it's one of the greatest movies ever made
2:32 Look at the top left corner.
What.
Carlos Rivera Fernandez lol
I wonder if that's what it's called in England or something. Like, they de-emphasize the actual Independence Day thing?
@@StreetHierarchy we call it Independence day too. This is the end is another film clip they play later. Just a mistake.
hey, Slate, it's spelled RELEVANT. with an A.
0:13 also, Slate, “Children” not “Childen.”
Good on ya, bro.
I agree with Fukuyama that we need a future. However, I think Fukuyama's own thinking as it is expressed in the "End of history" is the real threat to the very concept of future. Fukyama reveals this also in this short video, when he warns us that society perhaps won't "...grow. That next year is gonna be bigger, more buildings and more stuff to do and more technology, Actually, a lot of places that isn't happening, nations are going in reverse."
This is Fukyama's conception of the future; more of what we have, more liberal capitalism, more "big buildings and technology". The problem is however that we are incapable of imagining any other future than this one. The current social-democratic liberal capitalism is unbearable; it is unsustainable, incapable of distributing goods equally to the whole world, and most alarmingly; incapable of fixing itself. The stage of politics, at which we were supposed to be able to find solutions to these problems, has become a shit-fest of polarized, pointless bickering and identity-politics, where the main concern is whether to be PC or not. At the same time, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple are amassing un-equalled influence on our daily lives, paying little-to-no taxes (undermining the very system of taxing. In all honesty, both the left and the right's policies on taxation are inherently flawed and retarded as they are incapable of dealing with the problem of international tax-evasion) and in control of what will become the most fundamental aspect of our infrastructure in the future.
In "Children of Men", the future is doomed because of some unexplained fertility-drop. In our world, the future is doomed because we are incapable of imagining anything else than re-producing this broken system, and bickering about how we behave in conversation while we do it. The thought of Zizek is really interesting on this topic (he accidently also loves this film)
people will always multiply, it's a case of who, if you look at japan as he said, its birthrate is in decline, most white people with high iq also have an average of 1.5 kids. makes you wonder about immigration and the true reason behind it....
This current government is unsustainable.
It’s spending and burrowing is unsustainable.
It’s Trade and Budget deficits are unsustainable.
It’s never ending proxy-wars and regime changes are unsustainable.
It’s tax burden on the real economy over the long term is unsustainable.
Its foreign policy to police the world is unsustainable.
i love your 2nd sentence. It explains why it took so long for me to see this vid. I am quite familiar with his work. Now with COVID-19 we can see how great this movie was and always will be. View Zizek's review of the film on youtube. (that came from the DVD).
I remember 2006, the "war on terror" was a depressing and scary time filled full of mindless panic.
Good stuff. Thanks for deepening & reminding me of it. The book sounds like a good read.
William, we're on our way now. Towards a world like this. No doubt about it. Look what happened today in the UK. It is completely isolated...
Probably my favorite my ever .
why is he giving us the finger? 6:00
So, I see some hate for this guy. I've never heard of the man. Anyone feeling generous and want to give us a crash course? I googled him but everything I read seemed abstract, conceptual, and not likely to piss off everyday normal people one way or the other.
He wrote a rather thorough and nuanced book about Hegel, and epistemological and political concepts, etc. But most people haven't read it. People think he's dumb because they think his book justifies 'liberalism' or 'neoliberalism'. Spoiler alert, he didn't and doesn't.
Fukuyama is a Nietzchean anyway.
Fukuyama's thesis was just basically the same thesis that Alexandre Kojeve said, and he in turn got it from Hegel.
It's a technical philosophic argument that only really makes sense to people who have studied German philosophy.
But basically reason/understanding of reality changes from 'culture' to 'culture', from 'society to society', but there's a progression of understanding eventually, so that the society's understanding of what is true is reconciled with what is really true.
The ending of this is modern liberal society that understands reality as being constructed by individuals, and hence a free society of individuals. In other words a liberal secular society where laws are made by man, and only by man (i.e. not by the Gods).
This is materialist, liberal society.
The Hegelian argument was that this arrived with Napoleon. Fukuyama basically just advanced the view that now finally with Marxism being discredited, Hegel's argument is finally actualised, as there's no other practical alternative to liberalism.
BUT this is only the surface of Fukuyama's argument. You don't have to dig deep to see that he suggests a philosophical critique of this argument in his own book. His own title even says it. "The End of History and the Last Man"
'The Last Man' is a concept from Nietzsche. And Nietzsche was the anti-Hegelian par excellence.
People who criticise Fukuyama as a blind liberal are stupid, for they don't even realise that he provided a stinging critique of liberalism IN HIS OWN BOOK.
But people never read stuff. And when they do they don't read properly.
A lot of uneducated and willfully ignorant people from both the right and left (but predominantly the right) have created a boogeyman of neoliberalism and then completely misinterepreted Fukuyama's works as being a 'globalist shill'.
An ideologue of Postmodernism, who proposed "The End of Historty", proclaiming and celebrating the final fall of socialism and the victory of capitalism as the culmination of the "cold war".
politics, and history, will continue as long as there are people who are afraid
People like Francis Fukuyama with his "end of history" tripe are the reason why this movie is prophetic. He is the proverbial partisan who instead of delivering hope like Theo, is represented by Theo's cousin and Luke, self-medicating with their preferred ideology. He can't even bother to mention climate change, something our current system is completely unable to address and that the situation in the movie clearly alludes to.
Climate Change is clearly not a problem in this movie - when the entire population of the human race will be gone in 75 years.
The reason we should take climate change seriously is for the sake of future generations.
In Children of Men, there is no future - so just have as much fun as you can before the inevitable happens!
There is no climate crisis. Study. Read. Inform yourself. It’s all Bs.
I think comparing the anti immigrant sentiment in the movie vs anti illegal immigrant in the US today is very unfair. In the movie, literally every place is in complete despair except Britain. Not the case today.
Yeah if the world was collapsing in mexico and south america then we should seriously consider helping displaced people. The problems that are the there right now can be fixed with changes in government
Exactly. Now trump isn’t even in office anymore.
top 10 most ambitious crossovers ever
"Childen" of Men in the title
Just 3 years from now.
Oh yeah, where's your "end of history" now mate? ahaha
Arturo Chávez it already happened
People completely misunderstand what he meant by that
such a good movie cause it based on real problems
Did they already know this stuff like i pet goat-? Or, did we will it all into place?
"The last child was born in something like 1996". 10 seconds later a clip from the films confirms it was 2009.
in the book it happens in 1996
He’s talking about the book
@@Mattdotnfo In the novel, the fertility crisis began in 1994, but Fukuyama was speaking about the film. He says, "the premise of the movie is that the last child was born in something like 1996".
@@intello8953 No, he's not. And even if he was he'd be incorrect as the fertility crisis begins in 1994 in the book. In this video he says, "the premise of the movie is that the last child was born in something like 1996".
@@michaelspears7116 theoretically, the infertility outbreak wouldn’t happen completely instantly. Babies would just start to be conceived less and less until there were none left. It’s reasonable for there to be a 2 year span between the beginning of the crisis and the last child born.
Most couples I know can't bear children and that scares me.
The future is in "Idiocracy"
No, that's actually a good thing.
Most couples I know can, so...?
World is overpopulated. Though I think white Westerners have less babies compared to Eastern countries like Pakistan, India bangladesh and middle east. Whites will become minority in their own countries
The birthrate is falling rapidly all over the world. In the Middle East, it has been cut in half in one generation, and in Iran, it has gone from 6 kids per woman in 1980 to less that two today, just like the West. Europe is in no danger of being replaced.
The world is not overpopulated. We have enough food for ten billion people *today* - we just don't distribute it evenly to the 7.6 billion we have. The world population isn't expected to reach nine billion until 2040. It's slowed down with incredible speed.
very interesting
2027 is not far off.
HARD SUN is also interesting.
As I watch The Children of Men today the poignancy is nearly difficult for me to hold to myself. I prefer to think of a meaning related to piquant, sharp.
Trump isnt anti immigration
True
Joseph, Mary, and Jesus in exile in....Egypt?
What confuses you about that? Mary And Joseph fled to Egypt in fear of being killed by King Herod. Gospel of Matthew somewhere.
Trump's election and Brexit are not dystopian scenarios this man romanticizes. Regardless of who is the USA's president or the UK's global affiliation will not harm us like it did in 1929.
As a rationalist and a moderate, children of men is a masterpiece for its own reasons. The movie is humanizing. Its continually shocking, while keeping the audience grounded. The cinematography is impeccable. The long running cuts of film we witness are inspiring, stressful and exhilarating. The use of music is shattering and emotionally inspiring beyond compare. Some woman is having a child in a hopeless world, its like witnessing Joseph watch Mary without the keys and notes of a Hollywood cliche. It puts on display our judgements and hopes and hostility to each other.
This terrifying and authentic film puts our desires and fears on display; our violence and compassion; "a world without childrens' voices." You get to first hand see what innocence and birth can do to a world without. What gets me the most is during the tank battle when the soldiers in the building realize there is a baby present. They kneel and cross their hearts at the sight that some goodness may still exist. Something Mr. Fukuyama doesn't realize is in all of us. It doesn't require some arbitrary population to inspire or whatever he is pushing upon us. What matters is what we can do for ourselves.
it doesn't matter if we can still make babies, it matters if we can care for those babies and give those babies the god given opportunity they deserve.
I think you are very wrong about your last statement. Both these things matter.
As a """rationalist""" maybe you can use your """"deep"""" knowledge to realize he is referring to the themes of immigration and xenophobia when he compares the film to modern days Trump And Brexit. and for the rest of your wannabe thesis you wrote there, I just have to say that You sir, Are a pontificating ass.
Do you have babies?
Slavoj > Francis
Misinterpretation of Brexit at the start, but nonetheless some interesting points and a film I am keen to rewatch.
Key phrase "implausible behavior". I always thought this movie was full of implausible behavior. If it was about population decline owing to the unaffordability of sustaining the nuclear family model it might resonate. Especially as the result of democratic governments captured by the billionaire class who as a numerical minority have every reason to hate and fear rule by a majority. The fact that infertility has no defined cause, it skirts around the fact that as FF points out, populations are in decline and not replacing themselves because it is too expensive. There is plenty of money but when it is concentrated into the hands of a fraction of a single percent that imbalance is bound to be reflected by a declining society tearing itself apart as the lords and masters laugh on from above.
Characters in the movie seem remarkably incurious about the causes and potential solutions of infertility. Populations are in decline because the CEOs need hundreds of millions in pay while the lowest paid workers, who greatly outnumber the CEO receive subsistence wages. This is by design. It's not difficult to understand why the movie fails to address this, instead chalking up infertility to some reason that ultimately 'doesn't matter".
More accurately anti illegal-immigration.
It’s clear that in this movie universe, the vast majority of these immigrants are only illegal because they have no feasible means of legally becoming British citizens and that this hindrance is purposeful. It’s not as though all of these people coming from all around the world are all trying to dodge taxes or something.
@@walkerfloyd7145 I know this is a 4 years old comment , but thank you , beautifully done
@@walkerfloyd7145 in the film Britain is on the verge of social collapse itself with terrorist bombings being commonplace and being barely worthy of comment when the main character is almost the victim of one. The police are all heavily armed - which is completely alien to most British people (Northern Ireland excepted).
The state has resorted to heavily authoritarian measures, the promotion of cheap thrills such as gambling and state sanctioned 'quietus' in order to delay the inevitable and allow the people remaining in Britain to have relatively comfortable lives unlike the rest of the world which I assume mostly operates on the level of the 'Lord of the Flies' as indicated by 'baby' Diego's murder.
Letting in potentially billions of people is just not a viable option for the government as the additional burdens this would place on society and the economy would tip the already fine balance and lead to yet another societal collapse. Not to mention that even with population decline there would be almost nowhere to house even a few million more people.
I like the film but I feel it is a failed aesop in this regard.
Thanks for being a Clinton simp Francis.We appreciate it
Can't believe this guy is still talking.
lol at 2:42 you called World War Z, a comedy film named This is the End
How many of the people in these comments actually have their own children? It doesn't seem like a lot. Lots of opinions on children, not a lot of waking up three times a night to feed a wailing child and running on fumes the next day because you're so exhausted. That tends to ground you in the realities of the present moment.
Ah yes, This is the end is also Independence Day and World War Z.
People like Francis Fukuyama don't have to compete with immigrants for their jobs, or their housing, or the education of their children. Somehow, the working classes, always pay for the vicarious 'generosity' of the elite.
Maybe the world should just think our planet is very small very small let me say that one more time we live on a tiny planet that cannot support the abundant life that people keep bringing into it so whether we need to put a law on how many children a person can have or the powers to be are just going to try to figure out a way to get the hell away from this planet and find somewhere else to live maybe a bigger one to help a soul survivor that way we can continue our constant gorging on the environment around us without a care in the world where we came from or how we got here in the first place the only way a great son or a great daughter is brought into the world is a great father and a great mother dad and I was a great child doesn’t see color race they just see The world that they were brought up and for those who don’t understand I am not going to apologize because it is not my place if we do not learn from this life we cannot teach our children any different than what we know now they’ll be no good the same ignorance will just perpetuate itself throughout the eons is there an answer absolutely not not for this world
My guy. PUNCTUATE.
because I dream about vandalizing shops when I am not worrying about Trump turning the UK into a concentration camp. Give me a break. Great movie, but not for these reasons.
Trump's saving 🇺🇸
fast forward , how is your savior now ?
@@safaaharrouni195 We were told he lost a fair election so we move on.
@@Exodus26.13Pi I respect you for your answer sir. Unless it was sarcasm . I'm a conservative by the way, no big government for me
Thought it'd be interesting to hear what a guy I deeply disagree with has to say about a film I love.
Turns out he's just fucking boring - everyone should go watch the Zizek video about it.
Would you go crazy if you couldn't have kids? No. Kids are the SOURCE of craziness. The world would calm down if there were no more children.
go watch zizeks approach on the movie
When you compare a country-wide concentration camp to Donald Trump and Brexit, you know you’re completely misguided
Prequel to the Sequel No my friend, trump is normalizing this detention of individuals and what he described could very well be the future. You may not see this as a bad thing, but it doesnt make it false.
Prequel to the Sequel Exactly my thoughts, smh. If anything, id say the movie more accurately depicts a future where western countries have open border immigration policies and those countries have become overcrowded.
Baka.
this movie was a 10 years spoiler alert for us , now more than ever where Europe has a refuge crisis, more refugee camps , and it's also a ruminant of the 1800 , 1900 London, something like out of Charles Dickens novels coupled with modern day concerns like pollution, sacristy of resources and climate change, on top of none existence regulations for big corporations ( we see chemical waist and pollution everywhere , probably what led to the infertility problem ? ) , add to that the cruelness of a fishiest system, immigrants put in cages like back during the cold war when Germany was still divided. it's everything that was wrong with us along with everything modernly wrong with us and everything that Will be wrong with us in the future .
I thought this was a pro atheist film, guess you'll take from a film what you bring in with you.
Neckbeard -- there is a good commentary on the relevance of the film:
www.vulture.com/2016/12/children-of-men-alfonso-cuaron-c-v-r.html
Cuaron, the director, mentions that that is his express intention -- to let the viewer bring in with him what he needs to interpret it. Cuaron dislikes explicit moralizing or even obvious symbolic statements that lead to specific interpretations.
You don't need to be religious to appreciate and reference religious motifs within art, it can be a very interesting thing to build on top of and utilize because those symbols are so deep within our social structure and culture :)
The author is a pretty firm Catholic. Pretty easy to see issues of euthanasia and abortion throughout the film.
Even though the concept of the movie is invalid, due to it being fixed 'easily', it's still pretty great.
Maybe their "artificial womb" cloning technology was utterly destroyed when the wars and riots broke out... Got ya!!
you do know sperm count worldwide is plummeting right?!
@@jakefarronmerlin7963 not from what I've seen - we are SO overpopulated
This is pure propaganda btw. Comes out right before the election to show you what your world will look like if Donald Trump becomes president. Smh, its so wrong.
Great fucking movie though!!
Gay
Now why’s the white man the Black woman’s protector in this movie 🤔
gravtube no we don’t the only crisis on the planet is you🤨
So??????????????????
as a mixed women, I was oblivious to that until you spoke of it , shut up !
lolololol "socialism should come back" - Francis Fukuyama
Fukuyama is always wrong - and always sees things in the wrong light. End of History my arse.
not seeing the movie...this seems to be a movie that the creator's mentality is the same as his/her predecessors creation apocalyptic type of movies...just nothing more than blah-blah-blah-blah pretentiousness....most of these type of movies are bland and repetitious ….I wish these movies have little bit more unexpected credentialbilities of twist of surprise elements...…the
I would give it a shot anyway, you might be surprised. It's quite a unique movie that has great cinematography, combined with real tension based action and a gripping story. It really pulls off a gritty, depressing dystopiadystopian societ very well. But in a very realistic way, as opposed to most other movies set in similar environments. The world seems so fluid and lived in, there's a constant mess of people and situations going on throughout the scene.
They mistook this is the end for Independence Day and world war z smh
Loved the movie, but to be political it actually shows how bad things could get with mass migration great cities will fall.
Nothing new it has happened before.
Good movie but not amazing. Maybe watching it after the pandemic made it worse.
His favourite movie but he doesn’t know when the last child was born, despite one of the first scenes showing 2009-2027…. Seemed all he cared about was bashing trump and Brexit…
So, Francis, End of History is cancelled? And btw Slavoj Zizek's commentary on the same film has more views)
this guy missed the fucking point
and what's that?
It was Hard to understand with his heavy Japanese accent. Sorry Thumbs down
Your english is really bad.
Francis Fukuyama is totally discredited. He wrote a book called the "end of history,"because he thought capitalism had 'beat' socialism after the cold war. So yeah this guy is 1000% discredited, and nothing he ever days should ever be taken seriously if you're a human with critical thinking skills
If that's your profile picture you are 10000% discredited.
Why is Slate using this neoliberal hack? Weird, very dystopian choice.
May be because Slate is mostly safe centrist outlet?
This man isn't a hack, unfortunately for you