The Children of Men and Madagascar's Exploding Palm Tree

Lately, a palm tree has been discovered in Madagascar that lives for decades, flowers and dies. It uses all of its energy to flower and reproduce, and, having done so, its life is over. This reminds me of my grandparents--all of their love, work, and interest is ordered toward their family; it is their only pride and delight. This also reminds me of the role of mankind as a result of being created in the image of God--to participate in His creative power. Just as He created man, not because He needed company, but because it is in the nature of His love to be generous and overflow with new life, so the end of man's love ought to be new life as well.

The film of P.D. James's The Children of Men illustrates this point movingly. The film is futuristic--the world has collapsed (except for Britain) and fertility has ended. A pregnant woman, Kee, is found, however, and the film's hero, Theo, works to get her away from the corrupt government and corrupt rebels to safety.

The message of the film is that in a world without new life, people become selfish and isolated individuals and the social order even collapses. The baby's birth, however, leads to many people risking their own lives for that baby's safety, even though it is not their own child. There is a particularly poignant Flight-to-Egypt scene in which intense fighting stops as the two sides part to make way for Kee, her baby, and Theo, who is not the baby's father, but who plays the role of Joseph. People reach out and touch even the feet of the baby; other people kneel or cross themselves.

Even Theo's relationship with Julian, the leader of the resistance movement is impacted by fertility: they had a child together, but their child died; after the child's death, they separated. I wonder if the commentary here on the modern world isn't to reveal the disintegrative effects of birth control on the family.

Finally, the line "shantih, shantih, shantih," which recurs in the film, is the last line of Eliot's The Wasteland, borrowed from The Upanishads, and it means something like "the peace which passeth understanding." It is a really fine film that quotes Eliot.