For a film entitled ‘The Lovely Bones’, you never actually see any bones. Instead you get some philosophical metaphor about bones growing around relationships, or something, from a girl trapped in a fantastical limbo before ascending to heaven.
‘The Lovely Bones’ is actually a rather good film, though. Peter Jackson, of course, manages to piss off the book lovers by apparently butchering Alice Sebold’s image of a midway holding pen for the dead by once again whoring out New Zealand and adding lots of massive CGI boats in glass bottles, and weird coexisting night and day optical illusions, but at least the entire film isn’t a huge show off.
Instead, it is in fact an incredibly tense and moving experience. It begins with a very rosy, yet not too sickening portrayal of the perfect 70′s family, as Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) dubs a voice over explaining that she is about to be horribly murdered. Then, when she gets horribly murdered, she is seamlessly transported to almost-heaven, as if she didn’t even notice being horribly murdered at all, and over looks her father falling to pieces, her family trying to cope with her death, and the boy she never got to kiss also feeling pretty damn sad.
The key to this film though, no matter how much the writers would like to have you think, is not it’s sentiment of love or it’s acceptance of death and so on, it is the amazing tension that builds in your every nerve.
Susie has just been killed, returns to to her home in the ghosty in-between world, walks through her door to her room, and comes across a massive white nothingness with only a bath tub present. Towards the bath are foot prints of blood and mud, and we notice that there is someone in there, their face covered by a flannel. A sink appears, the man takes the flannel off his face, and the killer wipes down his neck. Susie screams as he does so, and then she dissolves into thin air and it gone. This scene is about as creepy as you can get in a 12a, and the discomfort shakes you something primitive to your core.
Stanley Tucci as the murderer goes somewhat Godfather with puffed out cheeks, and throws on the most pedophile looking mustache that you initially wonder how he’s not prime suspect, but he’s so meticulous in his portrayal of a person pretending to be normal that you understand, while being completely petrified and disgusted. Mark Whalberg also doesn’t suck, which is a huge leap forward for him, and Saoirse is good at being dead. Her faint and wispy voice over could get annoying if you tried to have a conversation, but she also manages to be promisingly emotional and rather genuine.
Really though, the film is all about Peter Jackson. Although his direction is not solid throughout, and the aforementioned CGI scenes are somewhat masturbatory, the glimmers of what he can actually do are present in some of the simple shots.
For all his hobbits and giant monkeys, he’s gained the status of being a big picture director, creating overwhelming sequences designed to make your eyes crap amazement from their retinas. However, ‘The Lovely Bones’ exceeds when it’s still, when Harvey is creeping about the house, or when Marky Mark is staring at a candle. Ever so often you just get a sense that Peter’s getting slightly sick of being the New Zealand guy, and instead wants to be a proper, artsy director. One of those ones that Sundance likes. And why not, everyone should get to be a little pretentious now and then.
PnL.x
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