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A review by jflux
The Children of Men by P.D. James
2.0
POSSIBLE SPOILERS? (i don't talk about the end of the story, per se, but i use some sparkling adjectives while describing the overall mood of the ending.)
this really is one of those rare cases where the people who made the movie of this book took the parts they liked from a somewhat interesting tale built on an incredibly interesting premise and constructed a more cohesive, startling, touching whole from the sum of those parts. i didn't like any of the characters here. well, maybe one. the lead went through a transformation, but i'm not used to waiting 200 pages for revelation about the beauty of life to make someone less of a jerk, especially when the book's only 240-odd pages.
that said, i really liked the ending. it was subtle and brought home the bleakness of human existence. but it was too soon after there was supposed to have been an assertion of positivity for the erasure of that positive feeling to occur. that just made it seem less effective. so i liked it, but maybe it wasn't worth the wait.
i wonder how i would have felt if i had read the book first, or if i hadn't spent two weeks trying to track down a copy of this book in English. still, i think there is a human heart in the middle of the story that the movie tells. in the middle of this story there is only some big words and a lot of idle chatter.
this really is one of those rare cases where the people who made the movie of this book took the parts they liked from a somewhat interesting tale built on an incredibly interesting premise and constructed a more cohesive, startling, touching whole from the sum of those parts. i didn't like any of the characters here. well, maybe one. the lead went through a transformation, but i'm not used to waiting 200 pages for revelation about the beauty of life to make someone less of a jerk, especially when the book's only 240-odd pages.
that said, i really liked the ending. it was subtle and brought home the bleakness of human existence. but it was too soon after there was supposed to have been an assertion of positivity for the erasure of that positive feeling to occur. that just made it seem less effective. so i liked it, but maybe it wasn't worth the wait.
i wonder how i would have felt if i had read the book first, or if i hadn't spent two weeks trying to track down a copy of this book in English. still, i think there is a human heart in the middle of the story that the movie tells. in the middle of this story there is only some big words and a lot of idle chatter.