Trivia for
Children of Men (2006)

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• Halfway through this film, when Theo is walking down the ramp on Battersea Power Station, a stenciled image can be seen on a wall of two policemen kissing. This image was created by "Banksy", a British "guerilla artist" who specializes in this type of work. There are also other works of this artist in the film. One of them is a stenciled image of a child looking down a shop.
  
  
• Theo is seen wearing a London 2012 Olympics fleece in the Bexhill tower block scene.
  
  
• For the first week of release at Leicester Square, London, there was a mistake on the cinema marquee, declaring the film title to be "Children of Me".
  
  

• When Miriam is taken off the bus in the refugee camp you can hear the song "Arbeit Macht Frei" by The Libertines. "Arbeit macht frei," meaning "Work shall set you free," was written above the entrance at Auschwitz, one of the major Nazi Concentration Camps.
  
  
• The long shot where the Fiat Multipla is attacked by terrorist with all the FIVE passengers inside, demanded a camera rig that could rotate within the car. They used a rig developed by Doggicam Systems. The whole rig was controlled by a stunt driver. However the one single shot was shot in six takes over four locations. This required a lot of transition work from the VFX-house Double Negative as it pans around inside the car. The shot was then added with a cocktail, stunt driver and motorcycle (from the moment it hits the car), windshield, blood and roof, that were all computer generated with 3D-animation.
  
  
• In the scene where Miriam (Pam Ferris) is taken off the bus at Bexhill, the camera pans by several cages with prisoners in them. One of the prisoners seen is the infamous "hooded man" from the Abu Ghraib prison torture pictures. He is seen in the exact pose as the real pictures.
  
  
• When Owen enters the dining room in Battersea power station, the large black and white mural behind him is "Guernica" by Pablo Picasso (the image can also be seen drawn on the wall of the tunnel which Theo and Kee use to escape in the rowboat.) The painting was Picasso's expression of disgust over the Nazi bombing of Guernica, Spain during the Spanish Civil War, which killed an estimated 1600 civilians.
  
  
• One scene contains a car driving past a heavily guarded gate and over a bridge towards what is in fact Battersea Power Station. Between the four smoke stacks of the power station can be seen a floating pig, a recreation of the cover image of the Pink Floyd album "Animals".
  
  
• After seeing Charlie Hunnam's performance in Cold Mountain (2003), Alfonso Cuarón called him up and offered him the role of Patric.
  
  
• The car that Jasper (Michael Caine) drives is an old Citroën CX with some plastic add-ons in the front and back. That car's production finished in 1990. Other cars in the movie are the Renault Modus, Renault Avantime, Renault Megane II and Fiat Multipla. There is also a wreckage of a Peugeot 206. All the "newer" cars in the movie were deliberately made to look aged and battered despite them being relatively recent models.
  
  
• Michael Caine plays an award winning political cartoonist. In his house you can see some of his cartoons in the background, these are drawn by Steve Bell, an award winning political cartoonist for The Guardian newspaper.
  
  
• The song that Kee sings to her baby is a lullaby from Ghana called 'Kaa fo', which means 'Baby do not cry'.
  
  
• From the scene where Theo gets off the train in the beginning, many of the service rifles carried by the British armed forces are the XM8 rifle from today's era. The rifle is considered experimental today, with the program canceled in 2005 between US Defense Department and the rifle's manufacturer, Heckler & Koch. The XM8 was intended to replace current US M16/M4 variant service rifles by 2015-2020.
  
  
• Michael Caine based his performance on John Lennon.
  
  
• In the car chase scene, just before the car is attacked, Miriam can be seen peeling an orange in the back seat. Again, just before the refugee camp falls into chaos, Kee and Marichka share orange slices over the baby. In films oranges often represent impending danger or tragedy. This motif is also prominently featured in The Godfather.
  
  
• In an earlier version of the script, Jasper and Theo watch as Janice takes part in a collective suicide organized by Quietus. This happens near the beginning of the movie. Later on, Jasper lets himself get mauled by guard dogs in order to help Theo, Kee and Miriam reach Bexhill.
  
  
• At Jasper's safe house, Jasper discusses the loss of Theo's youthful son to a flu pandemic. During this scene, the soundtrack plays music from the Kindertotenlieder ("Child Death Songs") by Gustav Mahler, a song lamenting the death of the artist's children.
  
  
• There is an animal in almost every shot of the film. Mostly dogs.
  
  
• According to the information given on the newscast in the opening scene and the date the film begins, Baby Diego was born on June 21, 2009.
  
  
• The cities shown in the newscast that declares "The World Has Collapsed: Only Britain Soldiers On" are, in order: Paris, Moscow, Washington, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Brussels, Hong Kong, Berlin, Jakarta, New York, Stockholm, Rome, Shanghai, Caracas, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Amsterdam, Atlanta, Geneva, Marseilles, Lisbon, Seoul, Singapore, San Diego, Naples, Boston, and Antwerp.
  
  
• The character of Ian, a member of the Fishes, is seen sitting behind Theo on the train just before the Omegas begin throwing rocks and bottles at the train windows.
  
  
• When Patric executes the Polish man who is helping Theo and Kee to find a boat, he is singing a local Newcastle song called 'The Blaydon Races'. It starts something like 'All the lads and lasses with all their smiling faces, gannin along the Scotswood Road to see the Blaydon Races'.
  
  
• Cameo: P.D James - the author appears as the old woman with Theo in the cafeteria.
  
  
• Newspaper headlines throughout the film read: Raid nabs refugees' weapons cache AFRICA DEVASTATED BY NUCLEAR FALL OUT U.S. TROOPS FULL ATTACK EXTREMIST EXPLOSION A RIGHT ROYAL RIP 0FF: CHARLES SHOULD BE THRONE OUT MILITIAS OCCUPY CINCINNATI BOZEMAN & SPOKANE CHAOS IN REFUGEE CAMPS FERTILITY DRUG KILLS! SURGEON ARRESTED HORMONE ATTACKS: VIOLENT REACTION 100 Suicides: Nation in Denial RUSSIA IN CRISIS: Massive migration Police put mosques under surveillance Gatherings are forbidden BOMBING OF SAUDI PIPELINE DISRUPTS WORLD'S OIL SUPPLY (Photo by Janice Palmer) REFUGEES BLAMED FOR INCREASE IN TERROR ATTACKS (Thursday April 6th, 2018) SOUTH COAST TOWNS TURNED INTO REFUGEE CAMPS (Tuesday February 11, 2020) PM DENIES "TORTURE" OF BRITISH CITIZENS ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE DISMISSED AS A SHAM DIRTY BOMB DETONATED IN MUNICH (Report by Photojournalist Janice Palmer) England bans ALL immigration completely 25% INFERTILITY RATE (21.12.2008) Two years since last baby born NO BABY HOPE ADMIT SCIENTIST WAR AND FAMINE LEAD TO MASS MIGRATION JANICE PALMER questions Britain's ethical response to the refugee situation MASSIVE MIGRATION CHANNEL TUNNEL CLOSED All foreigners now ILLEGAL Refugees mass on Europe M15 DENY INVOLVEMENT IN TORTURE OF PHOTOJOURNALIST (photo of Janice Palmer. Monday 16.7.2018)
  
  
• Special effects house Double Negative created a composite shot of Theo's approach to the Ark of the Arts by pasting a bridge over the M3 roadway in Surrey in front of the Battersea Power Station.
  
  
• While driving to Jasper's house you can hear Kee and Miriam chanting "Om Mani Padme Hum" which is a Buddhist mantra.
  
  
• The woman who gives them the room is speaking Romanian. When Sid comes to take them she says "Nu va duceti cu ei. Stati aici" It translates: Do not go with them, stay here!
  
  
• The fighters that fly over Theo and Kee's boat to launch an airstrike on Bexhill appear to be F-35 Lightning II aircraft, a type of plane created to fit the specifications of the Joint Strike Fighter program and scheduled to enter service in 2011.
  
  
• The computer used in Jasper's hideout to show the video feeds of intruders breaking in is an Apple Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh released in 1997. In this movie it would be 30 years old.
  
  
• Kee's name is a homophone for "chi" (also can be pronounced CHEE) which means the energy or force of life itself.
  
  
• Throughout the film British soldiers are seen with the XM8 assault rifle, which was considered for a time by the U.S. Army as a replacement for the aging M16.
  
  
• Theo never gets to finish smoking an entire cigarette throughout the film.
  
  
• Theo does not use a firearm throughout the entire film.
  
  
• Animals like Theo. The ginger cat on Jasper's sofa, the dogs at Thomash and Emily's farm (to which he even comments the dogs don't like anyone), and the kittens in the farm house that crawl up Theo's leg.
  
  

• SPOILER: The line "Shantih, shantih, shantih," which is said first by Miriam over Julian's dead body, again when Jasper finds out Kee is pregnant, and then written at the very end of the credits is in fact the final line of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, a poem that deals with the theme of infertility in the post-World War I world. Originally from the Hindu Upanishads it roughly translates to "the peace that passes understanding."
  
  
• SPOILER: The length of the long takes: Long take in the car when Julianne is shot - 3:58, Long take of the birth - 3:11, Long take of the siege - 6:18.
  
  

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