The Children Act (2018)

As a lawyer, watching The Children Act, was surprisingly powerful. I hadn't expected this reaction to this film. Mostly I wanted to see it because I love watching Emma Thompson. But the film gripped me in a way I had no expected.

The Children Act was about, for me, the way the law impacts real people's lives. Often lawyers approach it from a very academic standpoint, discussing the principles and spouting platitudes. But the law is there for reasons and they are about how human beings interact with each other. The Children Act is about a judge, a woman who made her career, and her life, about the law, confronted with the fact that real people are living through her decisions, her actions.

The film isn't really about the issue at play.  The trailers focus on the issue of an almost adult child of Jehovah's Witnesses refusing the medical care he needs to survive. But that's not what this film is about. In fact The Children Act dismisses that issue early into the film. Instead it is about the life of that young man, the life of this judge, the lives of people interacting under the scope of the law.

All of that anchored by the completely competent and professional performances of Emma Thompson and Stanley Tucci, make The Children Act into something more than it might have been. I think for any thinking and feeling person this story will resonate. It has all the hallmarks of a good drama. But for lawyers I think it has an ever greater impact.

It is about why what we do is so important for us not to fuck it up. Something I wrestle with each and every day.

The Children Act
Starring: Emma Thompson, Stanley Tucci, Fionn Whitehead
Director: Richard Eyre
Writers: Ian McEwan