MESSAGE IN THE MOVIES

The Lovely Bones Rated PG-13

Directed by Peter Jackson.  Starring Saoirse Ronan, MarkWahlberg.

Photo © Paramont Pictures
Movie Review by Rev. Bruce Batchelor Glader

The Lovely Bones is a bestselling novel by Alice Sebold (published in 2002) that finds its voice in Susie Salmon (Ronan), a 14-year-old girl who narrates the story. 

In just a few pages the reader learns that Susie was brutally raped, murdered and dismembered by a neighbor.   Susie is now in heaven where she is able to view her family with a kind of omniscience and observes their grief and loss.  She is also able to connect spiritually with friends and becomes involved in helping them uncover the killer (while also getting a chance to experience the romantic love she missed due to her early demise). 

I had some problems with the novel, including its description of heaven as realized imagination, its romanticism of teenage sex, and its strange shifts of tone. 

Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Beautiful Creatures (another film with fantasy and tragedy combined) has now made a film of the novel.  Jackson has softened the story somewhat to get a PG-13 rating (it’s still brutal and bloody, but the murder and rape are off-screen). 

This is also a film filled with dazzling and often lovely images and great performances from the cast, with Saoirse Ronan carrying the film with incredible heartbreaking emotional range. 

But, I’m afraid it’s all too much.  Every scene is done so artfully, the film soon becomes oppressive in its determination to dazzle.  The movie combines so many different genres (fantasy, horror, suspense, tragedy, and comedy) with abruptness; it’s hard to get emotionally connected to it all.  

The Lovely Bones wants to be a sweet spiritual film without really dealing honestly with the problem of evil and unmerited suffering and death.  Like 2009’s Inglorious Basterds, The Lovely Bones requires a level of ironic detachment from the viewer that I am personally unable to summon up.  In spite of the warm fuzzies scattered throughout this movie, the murder of a 14-year-old girl remains.

Pitchfork Rating:
Two halos. (There are moments of genuine compassion and love to be found in this disturbing and ultimately unconvincing story of a family tragedy.)

Four picthforks. (For its sentimental depiction of heaven and romantic love in the midst of tragedy, some swearing, and bloody scenes of the aftermath of murder.)

COMMENTS!

Do you have comments about this movie or movie review? Email comments. (Your comments will be posted to our web site.)