Film - The Children Act starring Emma Thompson & Stanley Tucci

[retroHelen]

Well, be prepared for those who regard themselves as intellectual or sophisticated, who will be going to see this movie by a well known popular author and atheist Ian McEwan and then getting fired up against us by this twisted one-sided view of us depicted in this movie. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/emma-thompson-stanley-tucci-star-934573

 

It is based on Ian McEwan's  book that was actually regarded by journalists at the time (2014) as an anti-religious rant with a 'clunky'  heavy plot-line of a failing marriage on top of that to carry it into a novel rather than what could be summed up in a short story - according to The Telegraph & The Guardian newspapers.

 

2014 The Children Act by Author Ian McEwan

 

This is a 'middle/upper-class 'intellectual' atheist popular author whose book from 2014 is now to be made into a film starring English Actress Emma Thompson as the female High Court Judge and her husband played by Actor Stanley Tucci.

 

A story about a woman supposedly a brilliant High Court Judge, married to her intellectual husband, living the 'high life' that such well paid 'intellectuals' can afford, yet suffering all the ups and downs of their troubled marriage and selfish outlooks. Then the Judge is called upon to intervene in a hospital case where an equally talented young Jehovah's Witness of 17, who along with his parents, is refusing a so-called life saving blood transfusion. She sees how talented he is as he quotes verbatum lots of old literary junk the World regards as clever and plays the violin,  but is stuck with the ethical dilemma of whether to 'let him die' at his own wishes, or intervene as the hospital staff want him to.

 

Quotations about the Author from various articles:  "McEwan described the denial of medical help on religious grounds "utterly perverse and inhumane", according to the Telegraph, arguing that "the secular mind seems far superior in making reasonable judgments".

"The novelist has long been suspicious of organised faith, sayng that he has "no patience whatsoever" with religion,, something that’s not been hard to detect since his  1997’s book Enduring Love, where a north London science writer’s agreeable domestic life is threatened by a religious stalker. (Christopher Hitchens once suggested that McEwan’s hostility to 'irrationalism' had “something of the zeal of the convert”) In The Children Act, however, his exasperation comes close to being damagingly shrill."

"Before reaching the central plot, he limbers up with an Orthodox Jew who wants to deny his daughters a proper education, a Muslim who abducts his own child and a Catholic couple who would rather both their Siamese twins died than one be saved by surgery. Having put all of them right, Judge Fiona is then faced with Adam, a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness whose parents won’t allow a blood transfusion to treat his leukaemia. -the author's obvious desire to remind us of religion’s annoying persistence."

"When the judge, Fiona, braves the “shabby tangle of London south of the river” to visit Adam in hospital, she finds a boy of impressive precociousness who, among much else, “could recite a long part of an ode by Horace”. Yet, while he initially sides with his parents, he’s no match for a brief touch of Fiona’s secularism. Once she’s ruled in favour of transfusion, he reacts with huge gratitude – and undisguised gobbets of the author’s message: “My parents’ religion was like a poison and you were the antidote… It was like a grown-up had come into a room full of kids.””

 

"In the end – especially given the choice of Jehovah’s Witnesses as the chief target – the feeling persists that McEwan’s considerable intellectual and literary fire-power is here being used for little more than shooting fish in a barrel."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/11061406/The-Children-Act-by-Ian-McEwan-review-diminishing-returns.html

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/14/new-ian-mcewan-novel-the-children-act-religion

 

One sided Prejudice and discrimination disguised as film plot. The man gets acclaim for his researched descriptions of lives of intellectuals, the workings of the courts and other 'clever' workplaces, yet it is obvious - because he dislikes religion so much -  he does no research on the religions he is making broad sweeping biased statements about. Neither does he research the treatments and alternatives to transfusions that help with leukemia or the fact that Blood Transfusions may, in some cases, seem to alleviate symptoms, but is not a life-saving cure for the cause of the leukemia and in many cases may only give a few more weeks of life if the leukemia has really taken hold and may only prolong suffering if the leukemia is not able to be treated with other treatments as the immune system is suppressed by the foreign blood & treated like a foreign organ in the body.

[Fiona]

Well I will not be watching it... way to close to home for me. As a parent of a 17 yr old that had a judge by his bedside regarding blood.. it's been 5 yrs yet it still invokes very raw memories for me that I'm working very hard to block out.

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[ChocoBro]

Thanks for elaborating on what is behind this movie. A young elder in our Hall recently saw the trailer and was wondering what the bottom line of the plot would be. We were thinking maybe it really explores both sides of the argument, but nope, just more lame propaganda.

[Dages]

I won't touch it either. Satan's propaganda at his worst/sickest.