I have a general detachment from emotion. It's a guard against a young child version of me who was too invested in his emotions and was known to burst into tears at unfortunate moments. Other kids reactions to my outbursts drove me inward to the man I am today. I am not cold hearted, just well controlled, guarded. Peter Jackson's “The Lovely Bones” is the rare film that broke through my guards and tapped the well of that emotional young man I was.
The story of Susie Salmon (Oscar nominee Saorise Ronan, “Atonement”) begins with her narration explaining first her name is Salmon, like the fish communicating her innocence, eager to please nature answering a question no one asked. She then stops you in your tracks with a matter of fact statement: "I was 14 years old when I was murdered on December 6th 1973.
From that moment on “The Lovely Bones” unfolds a story of murder, sadness and heartbreaking purity. After revealing her murderer as a neighbor named George Harvey (Stanley Tucci) Susie narrates her story from a place called The In-Between, a place between heaven and earth constructed from Susie's imagination.
Peter Jackson animates Susie's heaven with artistry absent from even his “Lord of the Rings” movies. For the first time in his career Jackson makes use of film tech to deepen his subject, not merely to animate it. The stunning landscapes of Susie's In-Between are eye popping and reveal aspects of her nature, her innocence, her longings and unfulfilled desires. A crumbling gazebo holds a particular emotional attachment that I will leave you to discover.
From her In-Between Susie watches how her death impacts her family. Her father Jack becomes so consumed with catching her killer that he barely notices his wife Abigail (Rachel Weisz) is drifting away. It's not until her cab leaves for the airport that Jack realizes she is gone.
Susie also watches her killer, George Harvey. He has a past filled with other murders but for some reason Susie's murder has a particular hold on his conscience. He spends hours alone seeming to re-live each moment, moments thankfully unseen by us in the audience. The choice to leave the cruel details to our imagination is a controversial one; the book by Alice Sebold went into obsessive detail.
For me, leaving Susie's suffering to the imagination was the right call; I doubt that I could have endured watching the effervescent Ms. Ronan suffering as described in the book. We are given enough detail to construct the horror for ourselves and that is more than enough.
Transformed by make-up Stanley Tucci crafts a killer of remarkable repugnance. Today, George Harvey would be the poster boy for creepy. He looks like the picture of someone who murders children. A mumbling, ill at-ease creep, George Harvey sets off alarm bells for his simple lack of social skills. In the 1973 of the film however, he's just a slightly off shut-in, on the surface.
Once he becomes suspect number one, for Jack and daughter Lindsey (Rose McIver) who joins her dad's obsessive crusade, the film takes on a pseudo murder mystery feel that enlivens the middle portion of the film. We know he did it, they think he did it and we become desperately involved in trying to will the characters to the clues we know are there.
This clever bit of populist narrative is just one of Peter Jackson's wise choices. Jackson has made an art film, crossed it with a thriller and topped it all with a deeply emotional story of coming of age. It's almost too much for one film to hold, changing scenes as this does from Susie's gorgeous art-scape to George Harvey's dark chambers to the Salmon house consumed by grief and the urgent search for justice.
Only a director as bold and daring as Peter Jackson could pull off such a trick. His experience with the “Lord of the Rings” informs a good deal of “The Lovely Bones.” In LOTR Jackson used technology as a construction device. In “The Lovely Bones” that construction device becomes a painters brush and the technology melts into the subconscious aiding as much in storytelling as in craftsmanship.
Unlike George Lucas or James Cameron for whom CGI remains a carpenter’s tool, Jackson sees technology in “The Lovely Bones” as something to be woven into the fabric of storytelling. Susie's In-Between is never merely a place; it's the state of her soul where her imagination and desires take a physical hold.
Technology, story and character unite in “The Lovely Bones” to create a deeply emotional experience that transports you into the sadness of a little girl gone before her time. An examination of grief, unfulfilled desires, love and death, “The Lovely Bones” is one of the most daring and original works in years and one of the best films of the last year.
BYLINE:
Sean Patrick Kernan is a film critic. Check him out at: http://www.myspace.com/number1ramjamfan.
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