The Lovely Bones Flm Review

This is a very strange film that wobbles back and forth between brilliant and the ridiculous. The first hour of this two-hour film is intensely sad - chilling - beat me down with its aching family tragedy. It was getting late at night, and I knew if I didn't stop watching, I would carry these feelings into my dreams and would have one of those uneasy nights of sleeping. This was definitely a dream taker for me. So, I picked this up the next day. I would never dare criticize director Peter Jackson but well - I will a tiny bit - I think he makes a mistake by moving the film into a multi-colored CGI In Between World that felt like you had stepped into a batch of candy cotton filled with sweet syrup. It breaks up the despair, the sorrow that the film had so carefully built up.

It gets back to it, but it is a strange interlude and returns to it later on. But that first hour is a kick in the teeth that still resonates with me, lingering. It is interesting in reading other reviews on the Internet - many just think this is an absurd bit of nonsense in which Jackson went way off course - while others like me who felt the sadness at the bottom of their stomachs. Others who have read the book by Alice Sebold criticize Jackson for making it softer than the book. I have not read the book though I read the synopsis, but I think most people will be hoping for a different ending - one that better satisfies our desire for justice and vengeance. The book though ends the same way.

The matter-of-fact narrator of this film is Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) - like the fish she says. She is 14 years old and she is dead. Murdered. By the creepy man across the street. She takes us back to the days before she died. In Norristown Pa. An average young girl's life - happy - friends - a family that loves her - a boy who has asked her out. And then it is gone. But she isn't. It takes her and the audience a minute to realize that she is dead - that we are watching her spirit wander around. Till it gets very very dark. Then we know. Her father (Mark Wahlberg) and mother (Rachel Weisz) fall to pieces and become strangers to one another. You feel all this in your gut. The taking of an innocent life filled with promise, the danger all around us, the fear for your children, your helplessness to protect them all the time and the emptiness their death brings. The infinity of grief.

Rather than going to heaven which Jackson portrays as this perfect place, Susie wants to stick around and watch out for her family. The killer (Stanley Tucci as creepy and ordinary as possible) just goes about his life - building miniature doll houses, growing roses and planning the next murder. He has had plenty of practice. And Susie watches. Unable to really do anything about it. Like I wrote, a strange film. A ghost story in which the ghost cannot haunt or gain revenge - only watch - only try and connect with the living. Our expectations from many ghost stories is that she will exact revenge - maybe - but nothing is definite. Just the grief. The loss. That goes on forever.