*1/2 out of ****
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon
Running time: 134 minutes
Alice Sebold’s 2002 smash bestseller gets its title from the connections made by various characters as they deal with the death of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, the novel's protagonist.
However, in bringing Sebold’s beloved tale to the big screen, director Peter Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (who also penned the Lord of the Rings film series) have extracted these “lovely bones.”
Instead, the trio scribed an emotionally blank and jarringly unfocused adaptation – one that ignores the chilling power and imagination that made the original novel such a success.
Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan, from Atonement) is a wise and charming teen, on the cusp of young love with an amorous Indian boy named Ray Singh (newcomer Reece Ritchie).
Growing up in mid-1970s Pennsylvania to a stern bookworm mother (Rachel Weisz) and hard-working father (Mark Wahlberg), Susie dreams of becoming a famous photographer.
Her floozy grandmother, Lynn (Susan Sarandon), tries to focus Susie’s attention off this passion, and on another - her high school crush, Ray. Soon enough, he approaches Susie’s locker and asks her out.
Unfortunately, this joyous day will never arrive for Susie. On the way home from school that day, she runs into her neighbour, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). He coaxes Susie into checking out an underground clubhouse he’s made for the children of the neighbourhood.
Susie is eager to leave, but Harvey resists her attempts. He ends up raping her, dismembering her body and putting it into a safe. Susie’s spirit flees into a place called “The In-Between,” a splendorous and personal vision of heaven.
Instead of focusing on the ensemble of characters – Susie's mother, father, sister, little brother, and circle of friends – and how their lives shift after her death, the film ignores these vital threads that gave the original novel its title.
Many of the characters make their mark early on, have a few moments onscreen, and then disappear completely from the story. Eerily, the film focuses more on the deranged murderer than any of the other characters.
How does Jackson and Co. want us to feel the pain of these sorrowful characters if we spend almost no time with them? These major characters become minor, and thus an investment with the story and conflict entirely diminishes.
It also doesn’t help matters that director Peter Jackson mistakes visual flair for imagination. The In-Between is a kaleidoscopic environment of endless, digitally impressive landscapes – full of glacier-like mountains, mystical oceans and glorious blue skies.
This heaven looks like a desktop wallpaper. It is so boldly colourful, it entirely drowns out the story - one that’s (oh yeah) about grieving with a brutal murder.
The visuals look fine (and could have been better had the CGI been more convincing) but are entirely inappropriate for such grave subject matter.
It’s too bad the creative forces behind The Lovely Bones make so many missteps, since the cast is quite excellent. Ronan is enchanting as Susie, and her voice-over to Sebold’s evocative prose is as moving as the film gets. Tucci is also chilling (and almost unrecognizable) as the murderous George Harvey.
This adaptation, moved from a March release date to late 2009 to correspond with awards season, could have been a serious contender if it focused primarily on the titular fragments and less on digital wizardry.
But the characters don’t develop. The conflict becomes restricted. The story doesn’t move. We just end up feeling as disconnected from the events as the protagonist. In trying to mend this page-to-screen adaptation, Jackson and his Oscar-winning team of writers just ended up breaking its bones.
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