The temptations and pitfalls of adapting your own novel for the screen
Fiona Maye
While “On Chesil Beach” deviated from the source material in effective ways  Mr McEwan seemed reluctant to do the same with “The Children Act”. Here  the internal narrative is simply layered onto a new medium. It doesn’t work (although Emma Thompson’s performance makes it watchable).  Fiona Maye (Ms Thompson)  is a well-respected judge  arrives at home to  her  husband Jack (Stanley Tucci) telling  her  that he would like to have an affair  and that Fiona  if  she  cares about him  will tolerate it. This leads to the film’s single flashback: as  she  lays awake at night   her  imagination reaches back to happier times and to a moment of pure joy when he surprised  her  with a new piano. Unlike in “On Chesil Beach”  the flashback here adds little to illuminate their predicament: the viewer is still left guessing as to how  she  ended up married to an American professor  or what their love was like at its peak.
The marriage crisis exacerbates another one  this time in  Fiona ’s working life.  She  specialises in extraordinarily hard cases involving children  often with a religious element.  Her  newest case is an urgent one: Adam  a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness with leukaemia  is refusing a blood transfusion that could save his life.  Fiona  must decide his corporeal and perhaps spiritual fate.  She  has been able to dispassionately dispatch such cases in the past  but since  her  husband’s disruption of their marriage   her  confidence is faltering.
 Her  interest in the boy then  so steadfast in his own faith  is both professional and personal.  Fiona  takes the unusual step of visiting him in the hospital  and under Richard Eyre’s thoughtful direction  the camera offers extreme close-ups of both characters  allowing the audience to search their eyes for meaning.  Fiona  is looking for cracks in Adam’s guarded wall of faith. The viewer is looking for the real motive behind  hers .
Unfortunately  it never quite appears.  Her  judicial ruling comes suddenly  ending its fascinating inquiry into the nature of faith and connection before it has even begun. Adam lives but becomes disillusioned with his faith and begins stalking Fiona  trading one obsession for another. Mr Eyre seems to be looking for some of the same notes that worked so well for him in “Notes of a Scandal” (2006)  but this is not a lurid tale  and efforts to make it one—with wistful glances and tense  longing strings on the soundtrack—seem out of place. For this conflict to have dramatic heft  the viewer needs to understand  Fiona  better.
Perhaps a screenwriter with more distance from the original material would have been willing to radically reshape the novel  offering more backstory or drawing  her  decision out for dramatic impact to make the story less reliant on  her  inner life. “On Chesil Beach” did not call for such revisions  but “The Children Act” does. It shows that every adaptation is a unique case  even two self-adapted novels from the same hand. Some cannot simply be transposed onto the screen. Most of all  however  it shows that the writer who knows the material best is not always the one best placed to make the hard choices that can turn a great novel into a great film.
While “On Chesil Beach” deviated from the source material in effective ways  Mr McEwan seemed reluctant to do the same with “The Children Act”. Here  the internal narrative is simply layered onto a new medium. It doesn’t work (although Emma Thompson’s performance makes it watchable).  [TGT]is a well-respected judge  arrives at home to  [TGT]  husband Jack (Stanley Tucci) telling  [TGT]  that he would like to have an affair  and that Fiona  if  [TGT]  cares about him  will tolerate it. This leads to the film’s single flashback: as  she  lays awake at night   her  imagination reaches back to happier times and to a moment of pure joy when he surprised  her  with a new piano. Unlike in “On Chesil Beach”  the flashback here adds little to illuminate their predicament: the viewer is still left guessing as to how  she  ended up married to an American professor  or what their love was like at its peak.
The marriage crisis exacerbates another one  this time in  Fiona ’s working life.  She  specialises in extraordinarily hard cases involving children  often with a religious element.  Her  newest case is an urgent one: Adam  a 17-year-old Jehovah’s Witness with leukaemia  is refusing a blood transfusion that could save his life.  Fiona  must decide his corporeal and perhaps spiritual fate.  She  has been able to dispassionately dispatch such cases in the past  but since  her  husband’s disruption of their marriage   her  confidence is faltering.
 Her  interest in the boy then  so steadfast in his own faith  is both professional and personal.  Fiona  takes the unusual step of visiting him in the hospital  and under Richard Eyre’s thoughtful direction  the camera offers extreme close-ups of both characters  allowing the audience to search their eyes for meaning.  Fiona  is looking for cracks in Adam’s guarded wall of faith. The viewer is looking for the real motive behind  hers .
Unfortunately  it never quite appears.  Her  judicial ruling comes suddenly  ending its fascinating inquiry into the nature of faith and connection before it has even begun. Adam lives but becomes disillusioned with his faith and begins stalking Fiona  trading one obsession for another. Mr Eyre seems to be looking for some of the same notes that worked so well for him in “Notes of a Scandal” (2006)  but this is not a lurid tale  and efforts to make it one—with wistful glances and tense  longing strings on the soundtrack—seem out of place. For this conflict to have dramatic heft  the viewer needs to understand  Fiona  better.
Perhaps a screenwriter with more distance from the original material would have been willing to radically reshape the novel  offering more backstory or drawing  her  decision out for dramatic impact to make the story less reliant on  her  inner life. “On Chesil Beach” did not call for such revisions  but “The Children Act” does. It shows that every adaptation is a unique case  even two self-adapted novels from the same hand. Some cannot simply be transposed onto the screen. Most of all  however  it shows that the writer who knows the material best is not always the one best placed to make the hard choices that can turn a great novel into a great film.