The Genesis Children

One could hardly discern Aikman's intentions as a filmmaker at first glance. There is no real conflict in this movie, which means that in the strict sense, according to grammatology and narrative guidelines, there is no story at all.

This statement, however, could be quite deceitful, as one could easily argue that there is, indeed, a story of some sort, albeit not a traditional one. "The Genesis Children" deals with male beauty: there is a strenuous emphasis in the naked bodies of a group of boys, and that alone serves as reminder of certain theories. Can beauty be found in physical form? Or, as Plato would have it, can real beauty only pertain to the Ideal and thus belong to the sphere of ideas and not to the real world? There is also another conception of beauty that could be useful. When Nietzsche defined the Apollonian beauty he referred to symmetry, cleanness, perfection; and clearly some of that approach is present in Aikman's film, however, Nietzsche would also consider the Dionysian aspect almost as vital or, perhaps, even more relevant. Throughout the narrator's soliloquy this dichotomy comes forward "amidst beauty there is decay", thus accepting that, indeed, one cannot understand beauty while looking only at the bright side of it.

Nietzsche once concluded that art may deconstruct or defile modernity's values. Perhaps, in this most controversial production, the director intended to confront morality with creativity. One could wonder how this movie came to be. After all, it displays the naked bodies of eight young actors, all of them underage, and at points the camera seems fixated on certain areas of their anatomies (all of it would be absolutely forbidden by today's legislations in most countries).

Some of these boys have barely reached the onstage of puberty, while others have just started adolescence. There are long scenes in which they wander around naked, frolicking, playing in the water, and perhaps part of the audience could have considered all that nudity a bit gratuitous. After all, some people might argue than to watch the penises of several boys dangling around while they run to the ocean would not really advance the plot in any direction. Nonetheless, if there is no plot then why should the viewers be concerned with such visual trinket? Certainly, these young boys do not decide for themselves to spend several days on a secluded Mediterranean beach, spending most of their time naked for no apparent reason. They had been summoned by a newspaper ad: "Wanted boys to act in a play to be performed before God at Pavicelli. Come unprepared for your parts". The man who has written the ad is a mysterious bearded individual that appears to them as a priest.

Since the first minutes up until the last ones, the boys comment constantly that they feel like they are being watched by someone. That would be no surprise, after all, it's clear that they are there to be observed. In an almost metalinguistic retort, one of the boys says that instead of someone "something" might be watching them.

As was previously explained, the absence of a "story" shouldn't be a real hindrance; nevertheless, the lack of character development and some of the abrupt decisions the boys take can be a bit unfavorable story-wise. For example, after being naked for entire days, one of the boys gets up and decides to leave while shouting to the rest "You can stay here and run around naked in the sun if you want to, but I think it's obscene". If it was obscene, why did he indulge in such activities for so long? Why does he suddenly find it obscene at one point when he had no conflicts about it before? Perhaps, a more character-based approach would have served better the intentions of the director. Nevertheless, as any artistic work that deviates greatly from established norms, it bears some interest but I would not recommend it to impatient viewers.