The Children of Men: Pascalian Reflections on Contemporary Film

The second installment of this Spring’s Catholic Culture Film Series took place on Thursday evening, April 19, with a talk by longtime Center friend Thomas Hibbs, dean of the Honors College at Baylor University and author of two books on contemporary film and television, along with numerous film reviews.

To a packed lecture room in DeBartolo Hall, Professor Hibbs delivered a talk entitled, “The Children of Men: Pascalian Reflections on Contemporary Film,” in which he noted a recent trend in contemporary film toward in which protagonists grapple with more robust philosophical questions about life’s meaning. Discussing such films as Donnie Darko and the more recent The Children of Men, Hibbs brought to light the way in which certain films are moving away from a simplistic individualist, even nihilistic stance, toward the more heroic question: “Is it worth dying for anyone else?”