The Lovely Bones

Its 2010, and the movie with the honor of being my first for the year is The Lovely Bones, Directed by Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, of course) and based on the novel by Alice Sebold. I haven't read the book, so this is based completely on the merits of the movie.

And... um, its probably a better book.

Not that the quality isn't there. Most of the issues seem to lie in the Direction. Here Peter Jackson has shown his mastery of film my making some very tense and heartfelt moments, and at the same time ruined some of the drama with his own misplaced sense of humor. The reverence he'd shown Lord of the Rings is not present here (in fact, he's added some references to Lord of the Rings into this film).

But we're getting ahead, here. The film, if you've missed its scant marketing campaign, is about a 14 year-old girl who is raped and murdered on her way home from school. The story then follows her as she looks on from limbo, between Heaven and Earth, watching over her family as they move on with their lives and search for justice. The girl, Susie Salmon, finds she is able to influence the actions of her family by pressing outwards with her rage and emotion. But she has to weigh the value of catching her killer, versus letting her family find relief in letting her death go and moving on.

I went into this expecting the ultimate drama. Well, I suppose my lofty expectations were bound to be disappointed, but not in the ways I thought they would be. Generally, I just didn't like the handling of the story.

 Everything starts out well enough, the family drama is introduced, Susie's everyday life is brought before us with vibrant energy, making her loss of life all the more tragic.Much of the trouble begins when Susie confronts her killer in the cornfield of her eventual demise. Steve Tucci (somehow nominated for a Golden Globe for this performance) breathes heavily and grumbles, giggles, and mutters his way over to the girl in the most obvious "I'm going to rape you" manner possible. Rather than a serious depiction of a friendly neighbor who turns, with no warning, into a dangerous predator, we're treated to a Snidely Whiplash with a hard-on, practically twirling his mustache all the time he's on screen. It felt more like an after school special than a movie for adults.

Rachel Weisz, also terrible, though I can't say I've ever been a big fan.

Aside from that the cast was pretty excellent in all their roles. Of most note is Saoirse Ronan (The Accuser), who plays Susie, the victim. She fits right into the 70's motif that the film uses, and plays her part with such vitality and earnestness; every scene she was in worked very well, and she brought a lot of life and character to the film, where Weisz and Tucci had just sucked it right away.Though I was always glad to see her pop back onto the screen and ghost it up a little, her role was far from what I expected. The Trailer led me to believe  that Susie would take a more proactive role in solving her murder. Rather, she was mostly sent to run around in CG fields of grass, and add a pretty pointless narration. I suppose the purpose was to use lines from the book to supplicate fans, but the movie is so visually strong, and so much of the story can be told visually, the narration feels forced and comes off as annoying... kind of like the way Blade Runner's narration ruined the theatrical cut.

The worst addition to the film, though, is Peter Jackson's sense of humor. I realize that the story takes place over two years time, and that in that time, it would not be unreasonable for the family to discover laughter again. But in a very personal story about RAPING and MURDERING a 14 year old girl I don't feel a joke-filled montage of a drunk Susan Sarandon botching the housework feels necessary. I would feel like a more natural laughter scene at the dinner table, followed by the family feeling guilty for laughing without Susie, something like that might be a bit more appropriate.

Though, while Jackson tends to fail at delivering drama, he does so well at giving us terror. Action and horror are where this guy thrives. There are moments, such as when Susie's ghost, wandering lost and confused, first enters the afterlife and conjures up an image of her killer, that are really disturbing. Tucci is isolated in a washed out white environment, naked in a bathtub, soaking water dirtied with mud and blood. On a sink floating to the side in space lay a bloodied razor blade. Tucci, though sitting normally in the tub with a rag over his face, is filmed in such a way to seem so grimy, so dirty, against the white background he seems so perverse and disgusting. Revulsion creeps over Susie's face as she realizes her own fate.

There's also a short, but fantastic chase sequence near the film's climax between the killer and Susie's little sister. Its set up so well, you start to curl right out of your seat from the tension, and the gasps of a couple audience members were audible.

Despite some great visuals, a couple good performances, and tension for days, Lovely Bones just has too many flaws to be an excellent film, and comes off as somewhat forgettable. I might suggest saving the price of admission, and using the ticket money to invest in the critically acclaimed, best selling book, which is apparently some sort of modern classic. No doubt, it takes its subject just a bit more seriously.

"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life."