Hope...maybe we can't do without it!

2 movies...2 scenarios...2 non-American directors...maybe I am reading too much into this, maybe not!
1.) Children of Men
A deeply moving adaptation of a P.D James novel describing a futuristic world where there are no more children. It is the year 2027 and the world is in its 18th year of infertility (I did dislike the assumption that women are infertile, the men are still fine!) In the middle of this chaos a miracle occurs - an 18 year old African immigrant gets pregnant! Much of the movie is focussed on the unlikely hero - a disillusioned middle-aged bureaucrat - who gets the responsibility of saving the girl and by consequence humanity's only hope.
The movie is eerily set in the near future - red buses and Starbucks survive alongside newspapers with moving headlines and modified cars. London wears a grey-green pallor punctuated only by the black fumes from bombs and tanks. "Children of Men" is a bleak movie, with a strong undercurrent of love and hope. The hope that with the miracle birth, with rejuvenation, maybe humanity will yet survive - this is a movie that will resonate strongly with a world where strife rules and each generation is reared on lesser compassion and greater indifference to this strife.

2.) Babel
PG Wodehouse often talks of a concatenation of circumstances - those dubiously connected string of events that invariably lead to Bertie Wooster landing in an awful pickle.
Babel is one of these - an episodic story of disparate strangers who unknowingly impact each other's lives. The events are so much of a coincidence that you almost want to believe that each of our actions has a profound impact on lives across the globe. But, with Babel it is not the events as much as the characters that inhabit them, that are disturbing.
Dysfunctional couple trying to reconcile to the loss of a child , a deaf-mute schoolgirl looking for sexual fulfillment, a Moroccan goat-herd "unnaturally" attracted to his sister and guns...people unable to articulate their issues, pushed to a desparation that takes control of them. Trigger-happy societies, indifferent to the disadvantaged, suspicious governments that don't accept the help offered - societies that boil over every now and then and decimate themselves.
Yet, it offers hope - light beyond the darkness. But, the despair seems to alleviate only temporarily. It looms over the hope, threatening to engulf, threatening to snuff out the wee life that defies it. It is but a matter of time, an ephemeral peace that we hold on to.