Out here, I'm only responsible for the light.

The Light Between the Oceans

(2016)

(SPOILERS) I’m a sucker for a good lighthouse drama. Or comedy (The Goodies’ Lighthouse Keeping Loonies being up there with the best). Unfortunately, Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of ML Steadman’s novel The Light Between the Oceans isn’t that. It isn’t bad per se, and can boast a couple of very dedicated performances from Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander (and Rachel Weisz in an effective supporting role), but its melodramatic progression feels patently forced, such that you can see the plot staples popping out as its leads strain to invest their characters with plausibility.

Fassbender’s Tom Sherbourne, a reclusive and damaged World War I veteran (if only Diane Prince had been there to help him at just the right moment), seizes the chance to become lighthouse keeper at Janus Rock, off the coast of Western Australia, but it isn’t long before he falls for, and marries, Vikander’s Isabel Graysmark. Following two miscarriages, the arrival of a boat occupied by a dead man and a baby girl is greeted as a gift by Isabel, and she persuades the reluctant Tom not to report the incident and pretend the girl is theirs. The proceeding tale abounds with unlikely coincidence, in which, on a rare occasion they visit the mainland (for the baby’s christening), Tom just happens to see the actual mother (Weiz’s Hannah Roennfeldt) at the grave of her husband and daughter.

Tom’s growing guilt, leading to his sending Hannah notes and mementos, is convincingly portrayed by the Fass. And Vikander is hugely affecting as a mother overcome by the loss of her children. Still, though, it’s painfully evident, for plot expediency, that Tom is granted the picture’s moral centre while Isabel remains oblivious even when Hannah appears on the scene, so gradually reducing sympathy with her point of view and maternal attachment. This is a picture that, in order to stay its course, requires its characters to engage in Tom’s reticence from communication and expressed feeling, at least until Weisz’s sympathetic mother, struggling to find a path with a reunited daughter who just wants her “real” mommy back, is given the empathy and insight the main couple lack.

There’s a sense, as with his previous The Place Beyond the Pines, that Cianfrance lacks a firm grip on the storytelling side, that he’s plumped for a dramatic weepy but has only sporadic investment in or identification with the tale itself; you can see a similar interest in intertwining generational tragedies running through both films, with ellipses and the past returning to haunt protagonists. The Light Between the Oceans is gorgeously shot by Adam Arkapaw, and Cianfrance is a sensitive actor’s director, keen to linger and draw out as much resonance as he can from a performance, but he’s dreadfully let down by Alexandre Desplat’s over-emphatic score, almost a parody of the tearjerker, it’s so unsubtle. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a composer as variable as Desplat, who can completely make one movie and all but ruin another.

While it takes unconvincing dramatic licence at key points, The Light Between Oceans is at least more grounded than The Place Beyond the Pines, and more convincing overall. The introduction of Hannah, although burdened by an awkward and unnecessary flashback (Weisz is easily a great enough actress to carry inn her face and bearing all you need to know) that threatens to schism the picture halfway through, turns out to be the element that sustains it. It’s her character who can offer the forgiveness and understanding Tom and Isabel lack. And there is the hope of generations carrying this insight onwards, in the now adult Lucy-Grace (Slow West’s Caren Pistorius). Nevertheless, one almost feels there was a better, lower-key and more meditative picture here, one without the dramatic fireworks of the novel. As is not uncommon among his peers, Cianfrance appears to be a misconceived multi-hyphenate; he’s a much better director than he is screenwriter/adaptor.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

So you made contact with the French operative?

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features opted to change the title from The Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a nourish, dour, subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, part to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Along with Pain & Gain and The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street might be viewed as the completion of a loose 2013 trilogy on the subject of success and excess; the American Dream gone awry. It’s the superior picture to its fellows, by turns enthralling, absurd, outrageous and hilarious. This is the fieriest, most deliriously vibrant picture from the director since the millennium turned. Nevertheless, stood in the company of Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese film from which The Wolf of Wall Street consciously takes many of its cues, it is found wanting.

I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983)
(SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. That doesn’t mea…

You keep a horse in the basement?

The ‘Burbs (1989)
(SPOILERS) The ‘Burbs is Joe Dante’s masterpiece. Or at least, his masterpiece that isn’t his bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you masterpiece Gremlins 2: The New Batch, or his high profile masterpiece Gremlins. Unlike those two, the latter of which bolted out of the gate and took audiences by surprise with it’s black wit subverting the expected Spielberg melange, and the first which was roundly shunned by viewers and critics for being absolutely nothing like the first and waving that fact gleefully under their noses, The ‘Burbs took a while to gain its foothold in the Dante pantheon.

It came out at a time when there had been a good few movies (not least Dante’s) taking a poke at small town Americana, and it was a Tom Hanks movie when Hanks was still a broad strokes comedy guy (Big had just made him big, Turner and Hooch was a few months away; you know you’ve really made it when you co-star with a pooch). It’s true to say that some, as with say The Big Lebowski, “got it” on fi…

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(1982)
(SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek, but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

You can’t keep the whole world in the dark about what’s going on. Once they know that a five-mile hunk of rock is going to hit the world at 30,000 miles per hour, the people will want to know what the hell we intend to do about it.

Meteor (1979)
(SPOILERS) In which we find Sean Connery – or his agent, whom he got rid of subsequent to this and Cuba – showing how completely out of touch he was by the late 1970s. Hence hitching his cart to the moribund disaster movie genre just as movie entertainment was being rewritten and stolen from under him. He wasn’t alone, of course – pal Michael Caine would appear in both The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure during this period – but Meteor’s lack of commercial appeal was only accentuated by how functional and charmless its star is in it. Some have cited Meteor as the worst movie of his career (Christopher Bray in his book on the actor), but its sin is not one of being outright terrible, rather of being terminally dull.

You’re a regular little CIA all on your own, aren’t you?

The Internecine Project (1974)
(SPOILERS) I underrated Ken Hughes’ sharp little spy thriller last time I saw it; probably, the quality of the battered, pan-and-scanned print didn’t help any. In pristine form, The Internecine Project – I think it’s a great title, in contrast to Glenn Erickson’s appraisal – reveals itself as commendably oddball and unlikely, but also politically shrewd picture, if in a manner that is anything but heavy-handed. Plus, it has James Coburn, being magnificently James Coburn about everything.

Well, it seems our Mr Steed is not such an efficient watchdog after all.

The Avengers 2.7: The Decapod
A title suggesting some variety of monstrous aquatic threat for Steed and Julie Stevens’ Venus Smith. Alas, the reality is much more mundane. The Decapod refers to a Mongo-esque masked wrestler, one who doesn’t even announce “I will destroy you!” at the top of his lungs. Still, there’s always Philip “Solon” Madoc looking very shifty to pass the time.

Madoc is Stepan, a Republic of the Balkans embassy official and the brother-in-law of President Yakob Borb (Paul Stassino). There’s no love lost between him and his ladies’ man bro, and dark deeds are taking place with the embassy confines, but who is responsible proves elusive. Steed is called in, or rather calls Venus in as a replacement, when Borb’s private secretary is murdered by Mongo. Steed isn’t buying that she slipped and broke her neck in the shower; “I shouldn’t like a similar accident to happen to you” he informs the President.

The trail leads to wrestling bouts at the public baths, where the Butcher…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog