The Lovely Bones

Rating

Director

Peter Jackson

Screenplay

Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson (Novel: Alice Sebold)

Length

135 min.

Starring

Susan Sarandon, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Nikki SooHoo, Amanda Michalka, Jake Abel, Rose McIver, Michael Imperioli

MPAA Rating

PG-13 for mature thematic material involving disturbing violent content and images, and some language.

Review

Coping with the loss of a child is an unbearable proposition. When that child is taken prematurely at the hands of another, it is torturous. The Lovely Bones attempts to explore the organic response to the murder of a young girl while the audience hopes justice can be found.

There is one primary story in The Lovely Bones, but the film feels like two distinct ones barely interconnected. This is the story of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) whose precious life was ended prematurely by a vicious serial child murderer. Her afterlife begins in a purgatory-like environment of pleasant visual stimuli where she watches over her family as they cope with her passing and tries to push them towards solving the murder. It is based on a celebrated novel by Alice Sebold, but has been chastised for eliminating some of its heavier elements.

But her interaction with the real world is fairly limited and although there are times when suggestions she pushes through may guide her father towards solving the crime, it seems almost tangential, acting as detective and guardian and not as comforter. This is where the film feels so disjointed. Add in a fun, but unnecessary appearance by Susan Sarandon as Susie’s grandmother, and you have a film that, although interesting and visually stunning, sometimes feels distant and unguided.

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy showed mass audiences how well he could handle powerful stories, strong characters and capable actors. However, somewhere along the way, he forgot how to string the concepts together. Individually, Ronan, Mark Wahlberg as Susie’s father, Stanley Tucci as her killer and Rose McIver as her sister, give solid performances, but their connective stories meander on occasion and seldom interact, creating a somewhat disjointed feeling.

While some of the blame could be set upon the screenplay Jackson wrote with his partner and longtime collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, which drops the rape aspect from the novel in order to achieve a more family-friendly rating, creating a less involving and poignant portrayal. The majority can be heaped on Jackson who eschews tight, carefully cut narrative for broad, loosely connected set pieces. Perhaps coming off Lord of the Rings and King Kong his mind hadn’t quite shifted gears to small, elegant drama. The result is a bit difficult to sit through, not because the subject matter is so delicate, but because it feels like it should be moving a lot faster, have more interaction with the characters and resolve itself less lazily.

One aspect of the film that works is its historical significance. Although the story is not based on real events, the events depicted were lifted directly from its time period. Set during the 1960s, the film shows how trusting communities were during the period and how predators were not as quickly or as easily identified. It educates the audience on how limited detective work was at the time, taking longer to draw parallels between their own cases and those in other states (and sometimes not even doing that). You get an interesting look into the period, but one which is overshadowed by some of the film’s bigger blunders.

That The Lovely Bones works at all is rather a miracle. Despite a story that frequently rambles, a lack of direction at times and limited emotional underpinnings, the movie is incredibly interesting to watch. There isn’t a scene where you can take your eyes off the screen. The luscious visuals are crisp and evocative. The frequent collaboration between purgatory environments and real-world situations is well executed. And, in the end, you do genuinely feel for some of these characters, celebrate in their ability to find closure and rejoice in Susie’s ability to move on from the troubles that plagued her. Had everything been compacted and connected, it would have been a terrific movie. As it stands, it’s merely a decent one.

Review Written

January 20, 2010