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.

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

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(SPOILERS) Out of the ST:NG movies, Star Trek: Nemesis seems to provoke the most outrage among fans, the reasons mostly appearing to boil down to continuity and character work. In the case of the former, while I can appreciate the beef, I’m not enough of an aficionado to get too worked up. In the case of the latter, well, the less of the strained inter-relationships between this bunch that make it to the screen, the better (director Stuart Baird reportedly cut more than fifty minutes from the picture, most of it relating to underscoring the crew, leading to a quip by Stewart that while an Actor’s Cut would include the excised footage, a Director’s one would probably be even shorter). Even being largely unswayed by such concerns, though, Nemesis isn’t very good. It wants to hit the same kind of dramatic high notes as The Wrath of Khan (naturally, it’s always bloody Khan) but repeatedly drifts into an out-of-tune dirge.

‘Cos I’m the gringo who always delivers.

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Split (2016)
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Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

By Jove, the natives are restless tonight.

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Old Boggy walks on Lammas Eve.

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Jeeves: Tis old boggy. He be abroad tonight. He be heading for the railway station.
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Sanchez: The truth is, that he now presides over a state of chaos, of degradation, and of madness. From the beginning, Columbus proved himself completely incapable of ruling these islands…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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