He heard Miriam’s voice, low but triumphant. “The head is crowned. Stop pushing, Julian. Just pant now.” Julian’s voice was rasping like an athlete’s after a hard race. She gave a single cry, and with an indescribable sound the head was propelled into Miriam’s waiting hands. She took it, gently turned it; almost immediately, with a last push, the child slid into the world between his mother’s legs in a rush of blood, and was lifted by Miriam and lain on his mother’s stomach. Julian had been wrong about the sex. The child was male. Its sex, seeming so dominant, so disproportionate to the plump,
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There are two really interesting gender reversals between this and the book.
(Good birth scene, btw)
As discussed earlier Film Julian is a much earlier death, and to think of it in the context of both movie and book, it is really quite shocking.
The second is here. The baby Key has in the film is a girl. The killing of the father of the child was maybe the biggest signal this would be the case. The movie gets around this by having a [purportedly] benevolent NGO on hand to scoop up the refugees -- Key and her child -- from the evil, xenophobic Britain. Women are infertile in the film, so all the narrative weight comes by way of Key's bulging pregnant belly. She has her girl, and all the rest of the tension lies in how much Theo is able to give to protect the miracle of that little girl's life and that of her mother.
In the book, this baby child is perhaps the only fertile male on the entire planet. Certainly, this gives me the greatest apprehension for this baby's future. Thirty pages left. The dictator is still at large. Oh boy.
