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And then there was The Lovely Bones, which I’ll call a sleeper: we didn’t pick this movie out like we did Extremely Wicked, and in fact missed the first half hour or so. But it turned out to be an impressive one.

I read the book, by Alice Sebold, but some time ago, clearly pre-blog; I don’t remember it very well, and don’t remember it impressing me terribly, but it came back as the movie unfolded. I do remember some talk when the movie came out, of the challenge of the first-person narration by (very minor spoiler here) the ghost of a murdered girl. I remember not being impressed by this challenge: don’t you just use voiceover narration? I guess that’s pretty obvious – maybe too obvious – but it’s how it is handled here. And I have no complaints.

Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon is brutally murdered by a neighbor: this is the part of the movie I missed, but it sounds like it’s all off-screen and implied rather than shown. She spends the bulk of the film in an in-between zone, neither living nor ready to move on; she wants her murder solved, and she misses her family, and she regrets never having had a first kiss. The killer neighbor cleans up well, and the Salmon family struggles to cope: Susie’s father obsesses over the case, her mother eventually leaves, and her younger sister will take matters into her own hands. There are lovely, ethereal scenes in the in-between, magical and visually stunning – I was reminded of A Wrinkle in Time‘s visuals. The killer is an easy man to hate (the friend I watched this movie with commented that that actor’s now typecast for life). The Salmon father, played by Mark Wahlburg (I confess a weakness for Mark Wahlburg), is easy to sympathize with even as he makes some less than wise choices. And the ending is strangely happy, for a movie with such disturbing content.

I’m deeply impressed by the cinematography, the revelation of information, and the visuals. When I saw that Peter Jackson directed, I thought, oh, of course. That’s why it’s so beautiful, at least. I’m also reading that the plot diverged heavily from the novel in a few points; but my dim recollection of the book felt very familiar here. Maybe it’s better that I let so much time pass between reading and viewing, because I’m always prickly about the way movies mess up the books. But here, the general familiarity felt faithful enough, and the film version was stunning.

I do recommend; and suspect I recommend the book as well.

Filed under: musings | Tagged: movies, mystery |