THE LOVELY BONES (2009)

Written by Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh & Philippa Boyens


Directed by Peter Jackson



Where & When: Arclight Cinemas, Hollywood, CA. January 11, 2010 2:15PM



"The Lovely Bones" is the story of Susie Salmon, a fourteen year old girl who is raped and murdered on December 6, 1973. Now, I know from this disturbing description that this doesn't sound like something many people would want to rush out to see in a theater or like a fun way to spend over two hours of their lives watching. And it's not. Yet this is not necessarily because of this horrific narrative. The problem lies in the way this tragic drama has been presented. Peter Jackson, the famed director of the "Lord of The Rings" trilogy, has tried to use the colorful, creative fantasy world of those films in his filmed version of the best selling novel by Alice Sebold and has come up short. Very short.

After her death, Susie (Saoirse Ronan) has not gone to heaven but in a place called, the in-between where it's her comforting version of a perfect world. She watches as her family grieves for her and narrates the aftermath of this story. Jack (Mark Wahlberg) becomes obsessed with trying to find his daughter's murderer and in the process neglects the rest of his family which includes their other daughter, Lindsey (Rose McIver). His wife, Abigail (Rachel Weisz), while also in deep pain, is trying to find a way to cope with this unbelievable loss but her husband's volatile behavior is hardly helping this situation. Jack calls Abigail's mother, Lynn (Susan Sarandon), a wild, hard drinking kind of gal, to come and help the distraught family.

The police investor, Len Fenerman (Michael Imperioli) completely understands Jack desperately wanting to help solve this case but strongly advises him to allow the police to do this job. Unable to stand being in the house any longer, Abigail runs off to California, starting a new life as a migrant worker.

Susie's murderer, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci) lives across the street from the Salmon family. He is cool and calm as the police question him, asking if he saw anything out of the ordinary. Mr. Harvey builds doll houses and while the Detective admires his work, he realizes he left out Susie's charm bracelet on a piece of doll furniture but quickly manages to hide it before it could be discovered.

Jack becomes highly suspicious of George, perhaps with Susie's assistance, and convinced that he has murdered his little girl. He decides to handle him on his own. One night, Jack follows George, armed with a baseball bat, into a cornfield. When he was about to strike to get a confession, Jack stumbles across a young couple instead. Startled and thinking he is trying to attack them, the boy disarms the bat from Jack and beats him with it as George silently watches. Jack is hospitalized while Lindsey decides to help her father investigate and tries to get some evidence against Mr. Harvey.

While "The Lovely Bones" is beautifully rendered and remains fairly faithful to the novel, my concern with trying to make a film on this subject still leaves me troubled. The book was beautifully written, told from Susie's point of view yet when you try to translate what happens visually, a lot of power of the novel is lost and much more difficult to digest.

"The Lovely Bones" shifts in tone from a distressing murder and the aftermath to a brightly colorful, fantasy afterlife and it just doesn't work as a whole. The film works best at the beginning until we get to the murder, where it slowly continues to drift in uncertain directions. I know this would be challenge for any film maker to make but I don't know if Jackson was necessarily the best choice to try and tackle this material. He was unable to stir compelling dramatic elements that is certainly needed for this story to work at all as a film.

Tucci, completely unrecognizable here, is very frightening and gives the best performance in the film as Mr. Harvey. Ronan, who earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the period drama, "Atonement" when she was thirteen, is a very talented young lady and quite sure she has a big future ahead in films. Weisz is absolutely wasted, given nothing meaningful to do beyond displaying variations in sobbing and grief.

I really don't know if "The Lovely Bones" is something that is actually filmable or should have even been attempted. Yet in the end of this cinematic version, there was no emotional payoff and left no deep impression. I would highly recommend reading the book instead for a far more satisfying journey.