The Children Act (2017)
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 105m
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead
Synopsis:
A judge whose husband has just told her he is having an affair is confronted with a case concerning an adolescent boy refusing a potentially lifesaving transfusion on religious grounds. She takes the unusual step of interviewing the boy in hospital, which has far-reaching consequences for both.
Review:
This archetypal McEwan adaptation (by the novelist in this case) takes an ethical dilemma and adds a couple of further twists (the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses see blood products as contamination, and the judge's fragile emotional state). The suggestion is that if she had not been so shaken - and revulsed - by her husband's misadventure, she might not have behaved so primly towards the boy, with the possibility of a very different final outcome. It is all very commendably and tautly done - and Jason Watkins merits special mention for his put-upon legal PPS - but is in the end a piece of televisual drama, with a very literary inconsequential finish.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 105m
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead
Synopsis:
A judge whose husband has just told her he is having an affair is confronted with a case concerning an adolescent boy refusing a potentially lifesaving transfusion on religious grounds. She takes the unusual step of interviewing the boy in hospital, which has far-reaching consequences for both.
Review:
This archetypal McEwan adaptation (by the novelist in this case) takes an ethical dilemma and adds a couple of further twists (the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses see blood products as contamination, and the judge's fragile emotional state). The suggestion is that if she had not been so shaken - and revulsed - by her husband's misadventure, she might not have behaved so primly towards the boy, with the possibility of a very different final outcome. It is all very commendably and tautly done - and Jason Watkins merits special mention for his put-upon legal PPS - but is in the end a piece of televisual drama, with a very literary inconsequential finish.
Country: GB/US
Technical: col 105m
Director: Richard Eyre
Cast: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead
Synopsis:
A judge whose husband has just told her he is having an affair is confronted with a case concerning an adolescent boy refusing a potentially lifesaving transfusion on religious grounds. She takes the unusual step of interviewing the boy in hospital, which has far-reaching consequences for both.
Review:
This archetypal McEwan adaptation (by the novelist in this case) takes an ethical dilemma and adds a couple of further twists (the fact that Jehovah's Witnesses see blood products as contamination, and the judge's fragile emotional state). The suggestion is that if she had not been so shaken - and revulsed - by her husband's misadventure, she might not have behaved so primly towards the boy, with the possibility of a very different final outcome. It is all very commendably and tautly done - and Jason Watkins merits special mention for his put-upon legal PPS - but is in the end a piece of televisual drama, with a very literary inconsequential finish.