Lucid, lingering and, well yes, lovely, are all words that accurately describe Academy Award-winning director Peter Jackson's newest movie, The Lovely Bones.
Based upon the novel of the same name by Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones describes the life - or rather, the afterlife - of 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), who was raped, murdered and then stuck in the in-between of heaven and Earth.
This in-between was portrayed with rich colors and wide-open scenes of fields, meadows and snow top mountains, or whatever was befitting of Susie's mood or struggle. While the computer graphics were quite well done, this portrayal of an afterlife seems over simplified and extremely cliché, and does not necessarily do justice to the more bleak and tension-filled story still taking place on Earth.
After Susie's death, her family has a difficult time coping. Her mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) leaves the family, and her father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) is forced to take care of Susie's younger siblings with the aid of Grandma Lynn (Susan Sarandon), who seemingly never fails to have a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
With Susie's influence from the other side, her father and sister begin to seek true revenge in finding Susie's killer and bringing him to justice, at first blissfully unaware that the murderer lives in their neighborhood only a few houses away.
This part of the film is excellently done, with Peter Jackson doing a masterful job at creating hold-your breath tension for that perfect amount of time before releasing a flurry of events to unfold as they interact with the killer.
The film also does well in conveying a central theme of home. What does it mean to be home, to have a loving home and to make a house a home are all portrayed through the film's story as well as through specific imagery, such as a house charm on Susie's bracelet and the dollhouses the murderer makes in his spare time.
With this theme strongly holding the film together,
some of the more cheesy, overwhelmingly sentimental scenes can be overlooked for the greater good of the story and the reminder that the loss of innocent life never ceases to be painful.
3 Culture
Kelly Kettering
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