Think of the Children

The latest movie to come through our Netflix queue was a heart wrenching, utterly depressing look at the homeless population of "feral" children who haunt the subway stations and stairways of post-communist Bucharest. Filming of Children Underground took place over a year's time in the late 1990s, and the five children chronicled range in age from 8 to 16. Hence they are the last of a wave of kids forcibly born to parents too poor, or too unmoved, to care for them.

Their lives are presented as embodiments of Nicolae Ceausescu's policy of outlawing birth control and abortion in order to plump up his nation's work force. However, beyond the mention of this policy in text form at the beginning of the movie, the film does not explain or explore it in any depth. Hence the kids could just have easily been a random coterie, located in any big city subway in the world.

Day to day routines involve begging, stealing, huffing paint, crying in pain or frustration, smoking and, occasionally, enjoying a few minutes of giggles from normal bits of play, such as splashing in a pool on a hot day. Watching the eyes of some of the adults who pass into the kids lives, such as the nun who attempts to place two of the children (a brother and sister) into a facility, only to be rejected, or the mother of one girl, as she prompts her daughter to say she wants to return to life on the street in Bucharest, instead of holding her close and begging her not to run away again, is unbearable. Further, knowing that ultimately, the kids' journey is hopeless, and, as we learn in the DVD extras, nearly all will continue to live on the street after filming has ceased, will unavoidably leave a choked sob in your throat. I imagine the urge to adopt a child from Romania was strong in many of the people who saw this film and helped it win its numerous awards. I wonder how many of them think about this movie during their evening subway commutes.