“The Children of Men,” P.D. James

If you didn’t grow up with weird Anglophile parents in the Commonwealth, you may not have been raised on a steady diet of gruesome murders in vicarages, but you probably did watch The Children of Men, because a) it was awesome, and b) it was definitely the most embarrassing movie to admit to not-seeing that year.

The Children of Men is based on P.D. James’ novel of the same title, which is completely different in every way, despite assurances by James that she greatly enjoyed the film, probably partially due to the fact that it was the only of her novels that didn’t earn back its advance originally.

I press it on people with great enthusiasm, as The Children of Men is this quiet, constrained, mannered, almost The Wind in the Willows-esque elegy for the idea of England and the language of the Book of Common Prayer, which just happened to also work beautifully on-screen as a BALLS-OUT DYSTOPIA WITH REFUGEES AND FASCISM.

It’s probably not to all tastes, but James, now ninety and still cleverer than any of us, is a master stylist, with exacting prose and a wonderfully acute eye for human frailty. It occurred to me to plug The Children of Men today after finishing her odd, fabulous memoir of her 78th year, A Time to be in Earnest, which is the best account of attending interminable editorial meetings and signings and BBC events and feeding one’s cat that you are likely to read on this planet, and almost compulsively entertaining.