"The Children Act" movie now available in iTunes

by under the radar 0 Replies latest jw friends

  • under the radar
    under the radar

    I just discovered yesterday than The Children Act, a British movie starring Emma Thompson based on the book by Ian McEwan, is available for rent or purchase in the US iTunes Store. It's $7 to rent, or $15 to buy with iTunes Extras included. It's a bit higher on Amazon, and is not included with Amazon Prime Video.

    I listened to the unabridged audiobook a few weeks ago and thought it was great. The female narrator has a very pleasant British accent and sounds a bit like Emma. My wife and I listened to it while driving on vacation and thoroughly enjoyed it.

    The movie follows the book very closely, probably because the same author wrote the book and the screenplay. A few things had to be compressed or omitted so the movie wouldn't be too long, but that's to be expected.

    The underlying story is more about a female judge's struggle to cope with her overwhelming workload of highly emotional cases, and the sudden discovery that her marriage is in jeopardy, than with the JW case specifically. Mrs. Justice Fiona Maye (Emma Thompson) is dealing with an almost continuous stream of heartbreakingly difficult legal cases, some of which require her to make gut-wrenching life-or-death decisions regarding medical care. Lives are literally in the balance. Then she is jolted by her long-suffering husband's response to her seeming neglect of him and their long-time marriage.

    The case involving a nearly adult JW boy who is refusing the blood transfusion he needs to save his life is woven throughout the story, though the specifics of the case are not really the main focus. The book and movie do a good job of explaining the views of the JWs and the doctors, though they don't get the JW theology exactly right. The one Kingdom Hall scene is entirely unrealistic, nothing at all like the excellent scenes in the Apostasy movie. No doubt it will be seized upon by JWs to discredit the whole movie, and that's a shame. Like all good stories, there is a twist at the end you don't see coming. You may think everything has been resolved fairly early in the movie, but you'd be wrong.

    For what it's worth, I do recommend The Children Act. It's well worth watching. I might wish for a different, more satisfying ending, but that's true of a lot of movies I see nowadays.

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