Alice Sebold's novel deals with a family dealing with the murder of their precious daughter, Susie Salmon(like the fish), played with subtle confidence by Saoirse Ronan. She is the film's one breakout talent. Susie is a fairly typical teenage girl. She's cheeful at times, a whirl of emotions the next. She drools over a boy in her school, hoping to one day get a kiss from him. Her parents(Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz) are both present and accounted for, and seem fairly typical as well except for the dad's love of model boats. Susie also has a younger brother and sister, who seem to be around strictly to fill a room. This being the early 1970's, there's a certain innocence that envelops them. They are superficially perfect.
Susie's murderer is never really in doubt. The Salmon's neighbor, Harvey(Stanley Tucci) is young Susie's killer. There's no mystery, or even the tossing out of a single red herring. I could've used a little more suspense, but the film's trailer revealed the killer months ago anyway. Upon her death, Susie goes off to a magical purgatory of her own making known as The In-Between. We know that's what it's called because her brother, in a random fit of supernatural accuteness, tells us so. He then disappears to pretty much not be seen for the rest of the film. Lucky him.
The In-Between looks like it was ripped straight from Terry Giliam's notebook. It's a colorful, surreal landscape where pretty much anything Susie wants, she gets. Doesn't sound all that bad, to me. Death can be fun! Why, she even becomes a glamouous star for a few minutes there. That's sorta awkward. There she meets other girls that were murdered by Harvey, and they all become the best of friends. Ok, that's just a little creepy. Peter Jackson's interpretation of this paradise is non-religious in nature, a fact that has upset some people for whatever reason. Susie watches from this place that isn't quite Heaven as her family grieves, obsesses, then fractures apart in the wake of her absence.
I'm not sure what this movie is trying to say, and I don't think Peter Jackson does, either. Is it the story of a grieving family struggling with a painful loss? If so, where was it? I get that the dad is obsessive in finding Susie's killer, but how does her death change him? The mother leaves far too soon after the murder for us to get a chance to really see how it affected them personally. Harvey is the only character who gets any real attention, and Stanley Tucci plays him with his usual jittery perfection. His Harvey is a shadow, who tries to project normalcy but just enough deviance slips out from the cracks. If you were a kid, you'd think he was weird, and your parents would tell you to stay away from that strange man on the corner. Rachel Weisz is fine as the mother, although she's barely on screen long enough to register. Wahlberg...y'know, for a guy who was so good in a similarly timed film like Boogie Nights
(sporting the same haircut, too), I felt like he was playing at something rather than playing a real character. I didn't buy his grief for one second. His grief always looks like rage in pretty much everything he does.The Lovely Bones, while pretty to look at, is a tough film to sit through. The subject matter is too heavy, and Peter Jackson's attempt to doll it up and breathe life into it with an overuse of special effects do nothing but smother it further. Maybe I'm missing something that only a thorough reading of the source material can cure. Upon reading a shortened plot synopsis of the book, I'm left wondering where the hell THAT story is. It's certainly wasn't in the film I watched.
4/10
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The book was pretty much the same. I didn't feel like any of the book characters had depth, except Susie, Harvey, and Lindsey (her sis). It's one of the things I said the book was lacking, so I don't think that Jackson had much to work with.
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