Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Ben Chaplin, Fionn Whitehead
Intro:
... a class act
The Children Act is a class act. As you might expect, given the range of Brit talent behind it. The actor who will steal the limelight is the ever-excellent Emma Thompson in the lead as High Court judge Fiona Maye, but the film as a whole depends on all the support cast turning in finely honed performances.
Firstly, it is directed by Richard Eyre. People think of Eyre as primarily a stage director, but he has in fact helmed and written for the screen about 20 times (see, for example, the biopic Iris, and his elegant and tense Notes on a Scandal with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett). The source material here is the backbone. It is a close adaptation of the recent novel from seasoned British novelist Ian McEwan (On Chesil beach, Atonement).
As noted, Thompson’s character is a senior judge. Most of her day to day work life – from running her diary to laying out her ermine robes – is carefully curated for her by her super-loyal sidekick Nigel (a selfless performance from Jason Watkins). Her head space needs to be freed up so she can concentrate upon the weighty matters of laying down legal precedent in some of the very hard cases that make their way up to her agenda-setting level.
One such case forms the heart of the film’s moral dilemma. Two parents who are devoted Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t let their 17-year-old son Adam (Fionn Whitehead) be given the blood transfusion that will help relieve his leukaemia. Thus, the judge must weigh up the sacrosanct rights of the parent against the hospital’s duty to actually cure its patients.
There are many engaging and thought-provoking trial scenes, but the film doesn’t want to be merely a courtroom drama.
There are other dimensions woven through this core theme. Firstly, there is Fiona’s deteriorating home life. Constant exclusive concentration upon her cases has hollowed out her marriage, and her lecturer husband Jack (the redoubtable Stanley Tucci) informs of this with a strained but dignified insistence. The irony of someone who fixes up family relations in one way, having such an un-repaired home life is not lost on either partner.
Then there is the judge’s relationship with young Adam (a fine performance from relative newcomer Whitehead (Dunkirk)). This is perhaps where the film gets closest to the subtle and haunting quality of McEwan’s writing. As usual he is interested in the important things that always hover unsaid but by which we actually set our course. There are scenes between the judge and the boy that stretch credulity, but the film makes up for that in other ways. There is one scene in particular, which compacts all the ambiguity of these lives in a way that only great drama can. This element alone is worth the price of the ticket, and it is a bonus that almost every other aspect of the film is done so well.
