First Hit: At times this film was extremely well acted and interestingly unsettling, but in the end it was overly done up and not really well rendered.
One thing I try not to do is see a film from a book I’ve read. As my reading tastes are almost strictly non-fiction, I am generally in safe territory.
I imagined, while sitting through The Lovely Bones, that the book let the reader create their own visions by imagining “the in-between” and other aspects of the story.
Peter Jackson, the director, spent a lot of time and money on special effects to render a version of the in-between. This film is about a young girl Susie Salmon (played by Saoirse Ronan) who couldn’t let go of her very full and unfolding life once she was horrifically killed by a very sick man, her neighbor George Harvey (played by Stanley Tucci).
In their closely knit family of five, Susie is the oldest child and is dearly loved by both her mother and father (played by Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg respectively). Susie gets lured into an underground structure built by George solely for the purpose of molesting and killing her.
As it begins to dawn on Susie her going into this structure is not going to end up well, we see, sense and feel the power of her looming death.
Jackson never graphically shows the blow by blow killing of Susie, but he doesn’t need to, because our imagination does the job well enough. However, letting our imagination create our visions and feelings about the in-between isn’t the mode used by Jackson.
He uses thousands and thousands of dollars to give us his beautiful interpretative version of the in-between. Not that this was a mistake, however it does limit our imagination and, possibly, the story.
The biggest downside to the film was Susan Sarandon as Weisz’s mother. The overdone montage scene set to an early 1970's rock song by the Hollies displaying her drunken ineptness was misplaced and not required.
Ronan was powerfully excellent as Susie, especially in her non-verbal expressions just prior to being killed. She portrayed anticipatory fear and possible escapes in singular flashing moments. Tucci was very effective at bringing multiple levels of hidden creepiness to George. Wahlberg and Weisz were good as parents each struggling differently to the loss of their oldest daughter.
Overall: This is a difficult story to tell in both subject and content. Ronan’s performance is worth watching but the long scenes of the in-between became wearing.