In the movie theatre, I pull out a pencil and a plain, brown notebook filled with lined paper. I arrive a few moments early and am, what can only be called subjected, to the preview for a soon to be released Samuel L. Jackson movie. The preview opens with a beautiful, young woman lying in the middle of a dirt road badly beaten and in her underwear. Bits of the story unfold revealing the female character as clearly wild and crazy, if not mentally unstable. Samuel Jackson's character "rescues" her from the dirt road where she had presumably passed out, he chains her up, I mean with metal chains and a padlock, and proceeds to inform her that he is going to cleanse her of her "wicked ways." I'm at the theatre to watch Children of Men so I can write about it for Reproductive Health Reality Check. My intention is to unearth and analyze the potential reproductive health components of the movie so I'm already feeling feisty. The Samuel L. Jackson film fiasco doesn't help. Spoiler Alert: this may give away parts of the movie, so read at your own risk if you haven't seen it yet!

Alfonso Cuaron's newest film, Children of Men, adapted from the P.D. James thriller of the same name, envisions the oxymoronic future of a slow apocalypse. Set in London in 2027, Children of Men unrolls a visually symphonic story of life and death where the world is dealing with the fact that no babies have been born for 18 ½ years due to infertility. Chaos reins everywhere and Britain closes its borders, rounding up illegal immigrants and sending them off to "camps." There is the group of organized rebels preparing for an uprising against the British government—a government that criminalizes foreigners with an ethnocentric zeal (remind you of a particular real-life government?). Presumably, these rebels are "the good guys" and when it is revealed that a woman ("Kee") is pregnant, it seems that the rebels are attempting to get her to safety by smuggling her out of England to safe haven while in fact they are really planning to use her baby as a political poster child. London is in bombed-out, filthy and dangerous turmoil. As I slid down in my seat, I readied myself for the resounding reproductive health "message" linking infertility to environmental degradation, maybe a subtle or conspicuous nod to theories of population explosions' impact on the environment or pro-life fears of a dwindling population due to accessible abortion.

I looked. I really looked. But I just didn't see it. What I saw was a film that focused on the uncertainties of life; a film that relied on human fragility and ambiguity in the human experience to tell a stunning tale of tragedy, beauty, indifference, and love. In the ambiguities, however, there was a cautionary tale—a tale that scared me more than the prospect of a world on the eve of destruction. The film did not speak to me of what will happen if we allow environmental destruction to continue. The film did not scream of a world where populations exponentially explode and result in catastrophe. The film did not scold abortion rights advocates for allowing women to control their reproduction.

Children of Men was scary precisely because it lived in vagueness and doubt. We have no idea, really, why all of humanity is infertile. Little reason is given as to why the world is in a state of ruin; why the British government is so single-minded in its efforts to imprison immigrants in Nazi-Germany like camps. We do not know who is responsible for impregnating Kee, the world's only hope, or why she—and she alone—was able to get pregnant. This character was being sent to a "safe haven" where she would be able to live her life, with her child, in peace. But where was this "safe haven" and why wasn't it in environmental and political turmoil as Britain and the rest of the world seemingly was? If the world-wide infertility epidemic was the result of environmental degradation, why weren't adults dying off? Animal carcasses littered the roads while fecundity flourished in the tall trees of the forests that sometimes served as scene-stealers. The movie's contradictions are almost terrifying for me to contemplate as I realize that our adherence to the strict belief that research, facts and a caring and reasoned response to human's impact on nature will be our saving graces, we actually have no idea how this story will play out. When all is said and done, Children of Men, reminded me that in our desire to want to control and explain away every aspect of our world, we sometimes miss the beauty and fear that lives in the insecurity of life.

If you saw this film and have a different take, I'd love to hear it. I really tried to find an underlying reproductive health "theme"—maybe I missed it? Tell me your thoughts!