The Child in Time (2017)

While I don't know if Ian McEwan's 1987 novel The Child in Time would have worked as a feature length theatrical film, as a 90 or so minute BBC telefilm it has proven to be the perfect visual medium in which to tell its story. Superbly cast Benedict Cumberbatch and Kelly Macdonald play Stephen and Julie Lewis, a happily married couple until their four year old daughter Kate is abducted from a local market while out with her dad. This event estranges the couple and leads to a deep painful despondency for both, which would seemingly require a miracle to transcend. Stephens grief is particularly deep as he was the one out with the child when she disappeared, and as he also makes his living as the author of childrens fiction, the lost child is never far from his mind. The lost child, lost children, lost childhood, the 'child' as concept and its place in time, in memory, is at the thematic heart of this work, not just in its central narrative but in side plots concerning Stephen's long time friend and agent Charles, and the government commission on children's education which Stephen sits on, in large part as a way to fill the time. Though the running criticism on Thatcherism that pervades the novel is not here, replaced instead with a general disquiet about government efforts to help children, the core of the original novel is very much present and very powerfully connived. Beautifully sad The Child in Time is a worthy rendering of some of McEwans best work. It made me cry, again. ****