Ever seen Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 movie ‘Children of Men’?  Plot conceit: global infertility sets off the apocalypse.  I don’t know how I would react to it today, but in 2006 I didn’t very much care for it, the movie, that is.  I’m pretty sure I won’t care for the apocalypse either, but you never know.

The picture eventually winds toward conclusion with a sequence glorifying procreation.  I recall it displaying reverence reminiscent of a Fifties Hollywood ‘Biblical Epic’.  That may be a teensy bit of an exaggeration, but there was an iridescent blessed madonna vibe afoot.

For a world that has come to ignore overpopulation, this ‘beatification’ of birth pissed me off. There is, however, one aspect of the film that redeems it, but only compartmentally.

A scene occurs wherein our protagonist visits a government minister, cloistered away from the decay and chaos of the collapse.  Within the scene, on the wall behind the two men, Picasso’s Guernica, and off to the right in the background, Michelangelo’s David, held together with connecting armatures.

Whether this backdrop was conjured during Production Design or Art Direction, I cannot know, but I’m crazy about a brilliant ‘throwaway’ in a film,

So, on the subject of bleak despair, here’s a downer for your consideration.  Since reading it myself, unearthing these memories of ‘Children of Men’, I’ve seen it pop up a number of places online.

Maybe someone will read it to pOTUS, and he’ll want to go to Mars.  Soon.