Anyone who has dealt with death knows that it is one of the hardest things to cope with. Those of us who had to deal with death as a child know how difficult it is to comprehend the finality of it at such a young age. This is a subject that is tough to portray without being overtly depressing or sounding like a bad Hallmark card. Not afraid of a tough subject, Peter Jackson tries to bring The Lovely Bones to life, which is based on the bestselling book of the same name.
Susie Salmon (Saorise Ronan), “like the fish” as she says, is a 14 year old girl in Pennsylvania in the 1970’s as well as the narrator of the film. She is a freshman in high school shares a house with her mom Abigail (Rachael Weisz), dad Jack (Mark Wahlberg), sister Lindsey (Rose McLver), and brother Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale). They also get a few notable visits from her alcoholic yet somehow harmless grandmother Lynn (Susan Sarandon).
Susie is also a photography enthusiast, taking pictures of everything she can. Aside from photography, she spends time thinking about her crush that is in film club with her. One day he approaches her and asks if she would meet him later that day. Unfortunately, some unforeseen events will lead to her death shortly thereafter.
When she was walking home after school, she found herself talking to a reclusive neighbor in the middle of a cornfield. Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) lives down the road from Susie and asked her to take a look at something he built for the kids in the neighborhood. He walked over to a hole in the ground with light slightly penetrating the surface. He opened the door and Susie made the fatal mistake of going down the ladder (I’m not sure even a fourteen year old would be dumb enough to go down there).
Susie continues to narrate the film posthumously, exploring the struggles she and her family have in dealing with her untimely death. She is in what is referred to as “the in between,” which is a purgatory of sorts. Here, she reflects on her death and the continuing life her family has on Earth. In addition, she has to face the continuing life of her murderous neighbor.
The reflections on her family are intriguing at first but begin to lack any real absorbing qualities. The aunt’s drunkenness is funny but is thrown at us at all the wrong times. While certainly pieced together wrong, the important issues raised in dealing with death are still present. Can good come from death? Can a victim forgive a killer? Should they?
What makes up for any lack of interest with Susie’s family after her death is the life of her killer, Mr. Harvey. As suspicion grows from both Jack and Lindsey, the story becomes suspenseful and successfully takes over the film captivating the audience. Even watching Mr. Harvey do minimal things around the house keeps us at the edge of our seats wondering what is going through his mind. What will he do next?
Unfortunately, there is an awkward imbalance between the stories of Susie, her family and Mr. Harvey. As the film progresses Susie’s family gets painfully boring while Mr. Harvey continues to spark our interest. This disconnect doesn’t ruin the film completely, but it slows it down considerably at parts.
Too often we also find ourselves lost in Susie’s fantastical trip to heaven which needlessly disrupts the continuity at times. It’s no secret that Peter Jackson is great with CGI; however, some of it may not have been necessary in this film. Maybe having Susie narrate without us seeing her at all would have been better.
The untimely disruptions allow for conclusions that do not line up well with the rest of the film. As the stories come to an end, they do provide a satisfactory closure point on some levels. The problem is that tone is irregular and doesn’t properly build toward its desired ending which results in somewhat of a disjointed conclusion.
Director Peter Jackson has taken some risks in the past that have worked out wonderfully, I am not sure this is one of them. If you liked the book, this film may be worth seeing for the sake of doing the book-film comparison. However, if you are a fan of Peter Jackson, you may want to skip this one.
Film Grade: C-
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