"The Lovely Bones"

For those so inclined, I remind them that an inter­view with Peter Jackson, fea­tur­ing reader-generated ques­tions, and con­duc­ted by myself, is up now at The Auteurs’ Notebook, here. 

I’ve men­tioned this before, but I think it bears repeat­ing: I was quite a bit more excited about the pro­spect of Alice Sebold’s nov­el The Lovely Bones being made into a movie when Lynne Ramsay, the Scottish vis­ion­ary behind Ratcatcher and the spec­tac­u­lar Morvern Callar, was attached to said adapt­a­tion. Not excited enough to go out and read the nov­el, which is told from the point of view of 14-year-old Susie Salmon, the vic­tim of a hor­rif­ic rape and murder. I did won­der if Ramsay would jet­tis­on the book’s first-person nar­ra­tion, as she did with Morvern Callar, also an adapt­a­tion of a nov­el, and find a new way to tell the story. I wondered quite a few things. And then, for reas­ons nev­er made fully clear in the trades, at least to my know­ledge, Ramsay was off the pro­ject, replaced by writer/director Peter Jackson and long­time part­ner and co-writer Fran Walsh, and long­time co-writer Philippa Boyens. At first I rather resen­ted this, not least because it likely meant that I was going to wait that much longer for the next Lynne Ramsay film. (Morvern Callar came out in 2002; Ramsay, it appears, is cur­rently pre­par­ing to shoot We Need To Talk About Kevin.) As my invest­ment in the actu­al source mater­i­al was min­im­al, I did­n’t feel much bey­ond that, except, you know: Peter Jackson, whose sens­ib­il­ity I like and whose films a largely admire, was going to dir­ect it, and so I was prob­ably going to want to see it on some level. Had a stu­dio handed it over to Joel Schumacher we would­n’t be hav­ing this conversation. 

And so, Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, a film I found, well, enorm­ously frus­trat­ing. I was not put off by the elab­or­ate CGI visu­als that many view­ers of the film take to depict “Heaven” (and as a mat­ter of fact, they don’t depict Heaven, which you’ll under­stand if you’re pay­ing atten­tion; Jackson addresses the issue very dip­lo­mat­ic­ally in the above-mentioned user-driven inter­view I con­duc­ted with him for The Auteurs’ Notebook); and I don’t think that it looks too much like What Dreams May Come, or some such—have you seen What Dreams May Come lately? Totally dif­fer­ent thing, and bad.

No, my frus­tra­tion stems from the pic­ture’s thor­oughly incon­sist­ent tone, the way it can grab you by the throat one minute and make you throw up your hands the next. A pic­ture that can cut from a sear­ing depic­tion of a father­’s grief to a goofy mont­age of his tipsy mom mov­ing in to “help,” scored to the tune of The Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman,” to cite the one instance that does­n’t involve drop­ping a major plot spoil­er. The sore-thumb-like lapse in judg­ment is not an entirely new fea­ture for Jackson; remem­ber the depic­tion of the Skull Island nat­ives in his King Kong, or the ill-advised soft-show with which Naomi Watts enter­tains the tit­u­lar lug in that film? (Although Watts was so game she almost pulled it off, I have to say.) One feels rather grate­ful for Tolkien fan­at­ics, if it was the fear of their wrath that kept Jackson so thor­oughly focused and faith­ful in his Lord of the Rings telling. 

First, it’s a fantasy/thriller, and as the film depicts Susie’s awful death, and how she sees her killer from the after­life get­ting away with murder, the thrill­er aspect here is par­tic­u­larly fero­cious. Bones also wants to be an intim­ate por­trait of how a fam­ily heals, or does­n’t heal, in the wake of such a ter­rible trauma. And a little of it wants to be an affec­tion­ate half-sendup of the American ’70s. And of course there’s no reas­on this film can­’t be all three. But Jackson seems incap­able of mix­ing, or meld­ing, his modes. Instead, it’s as if the film starts, and then stops and restarts every time he wants to switch gears. He’s got a lead foot on the clutch. 

And more I can­not say, without giv­ing away major parts of the film’s storyline. I will note that I had many of what I call “Deuce” moments watch­ing the film; that is, times when I felt like yelling some­thing up at the screen. Not in a good, excited way, like “Get out of that vent you stu­pid mother­fuck­er the demon is crawl­ing right up your ass,” know­ing all the while that the demon’s gonna catch up with who­ever any­way; but in a bad, irrit­ated way, like “What the hell is wrong with you people why aren’t you call­ing the god­damn police RIGHT NOW!” Of course you can­’t do that in a screen­ing room. After the pic­ture’s been out for a while maybe we can get into it, and we can get into my…wait for it…philosophical objec­tion to the film, too.

Before I go, though, a word about Brian Eno’s score. Again, I am frus­trated, and I’m a big Eno fan. Actually, I’m frus­trated on account of being a big Eno fan; view­ers who aren’t famil­i­ar with the guy’s work are simply not going to have this prob­lem. Which is: about one-third of the score (at least) is adap­ted, mashed-up, or remixed from previously-released Eno work from the ’70s. Mostly. Which meant that dur­ing cru­cial stretches of the pic­ture, this view­er, and a col­league who’s also sim­il­arly know­ledge­able, were sucked into a game of “Name That Brian Eno Tune” for much of the movie. You’re sup­posed to be gal­van­ized, emo­tion­ally fraught, by some on-screen viol­ence, and instead you’re think­ing, “Interesting how he staggered the intro to Robert Fripp’s gui­tar solo on ‘Baby’s On Fire’ so that the most fren­zied part would hit just as [name redac­ted] is get­ting whal­loped with a base­ball bat…” But as I said, the major­ity of view­ers won’t have this prob­lem, and nice for them.