Let me preface this by saying that I haven’t yet seen Children of Men, so what follows is based on what occurred to me as I was reading this interesting Christopher Orr review of the movie.  He first notes Cuaron’s scrubbing of any meaning, polemical or otherwise, from what was originally, as Orr calls it, a “Christian fable.”  With this phrase in connection with the story’s theme of childbirth (or the absence thereof), I am reminded at once of That Hideous Strength, since it is childlessness (albeit not barrenness) that blights the main female character, Jane, in the last installment of the Space Trilogy.  Lewis makes it fairly explicit that there is something deeply awry and unnatural in the woman’s marriage and life that she doesn’t have any children, and once Merlin and the animals destroy the horrid Atlee-esque bureaucratic machine (now that‘s what I’m talking about!) the trilogy’s hero, Ransom (a philologist!), is there at the end of the story to advise Jane on how to live in a God-pleasing manner.  (For some reason, no one has ever made film adaptations of these Lewis stories–I wonder why!)  Now, cue angry ranting from Amanda “Some of the Non-Procreating Women Escaped” Marcotte; score one for the natalists.  Orr then also notes the odd, incongruous introduction of anti-immigrant sentiment as a feature of the non-natal future, and cites Ross’ objection that this feature makes no sense at all.  Just as a matter of sheer practicality, dying societies will take whatever labour they can get.   

Therefore, as I was reading Orr’s review, a thought occurred to me: the movie Children for Men is a much better-made, savvier attempt at making something like V for Vendetta.  The similarities are quite plain, so it struck me as odd that I have not seen anyone else compare the two.  Perhaps someone has, but probably no one has thought of the two together since most sane people seem to agree that Children for Men is a very well-done film and those same people seem to agree that Vendetta is the most awful waste of time you were likely to have experienced last year.  Consider: both are set in the near future of an authoritarian/neo-fascist Britain, both are making not-so-subtle criticisms of 2006-07 U.S. policy, both think that the most put-upon groups in such a future authoritarian dictatorship would be improbable selections from the list of Officially Designated Minority Victim Groups (Muslims and homosexuals in Vendetta, immigrants in Children of Men) and both vest their hopes for social and political change in more or less empty symbolic actions carried out by desperate revolutionaries.  Cuaron has taken a story of redemption and renewal and turned it into a rather hollow paean to predictable leftist shibboleths of diversity and “empowering women” (which is why Marcotte thought so highly of it), much as the original Vendetta and the film version took a story of a Catholic rebel fighting for the True Faith and turned him into the symbol for nihilistic anarchism.  The difference is that the entirety of Vendetta was shot through with intellectual and spiritual emptiness, which made it an obviously bad film; Cuaron has enough talent and skill as a director that he can take something of even Vendetta-like pretentiousness and make it into a watchable movie.