Note: If you haven’t yet read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones book yet, you may uncover some plot developments in the below review.
We haven’t seen a Jackson-directed film in four years and Bones is most definitely a departure in genre from his previous epics. Oh, and it’s based on the highly celebrated, loved-the-world-over, bestselling novel by Alice Sebold. Needless to say, there are expectations flying at this film from all angles.
The movie centres around the Salmon family, and we’re quickly introduced to its lovable members. Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and Abigail (Rachel Weisz) are parents to three happy children: Susie, played by Saoirse Ronan (best known for her Academy Award-nominated performance in Atonement), Lindsey (New Zealand actress, Rose McIver) and Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale).
The worst thing that’s ever happened to the Salmon family is when little Buckley chokes on a twig and is rushed to the hospital — and thus saved — by his eldest sister, Susie. But the Salmons’ idyllic, suburban life comes crashing down when 14-year-old Susie is brutally raped and murdered on her way home from school.
Above: Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan stars as Susie Salmon in DreamWorks Pictures’ drama The Lovely Bones, a Paramount Pictures release.
Jackson keeps his palette cheery, despite the film’s dark themes. The Salmons’ typical American town is rainbow bright and Susie’s "in between" is at times downright psychedelic. The director’s flair for fantasy is best used here, as Susie’s surreal world is captivating for the audience, while appropriate to her 14-year-old subconscious.
Above: Stanley Tucci stars as George Harvey in DreamWorks Pictures’ drama The Lovely Bones, a Paramount Pictures release.
The film’s grimmest scenes – inevitably those where Susie is in contact (real or subconscious) with her creepy killer (Stanley Tucci) – are punctuated by Brian Eno’s haunting, intense score. Relief from the film’s tension lies in occasional injections of humour. The lovable, chain-smoking, alcoholic Grandma Lynn (Susan Sarandon), for example, appears when the morose Salmon family needs her most.
The book contains certain leaps of the imagination and desperate efforts to wrap every plot line with its own tidy bow. Those shortcomings don’t disappear when the story is brought to the screen — the cracks, in fact, only widen in the movie which lacks the multiple-hundred pages of back story and exposition that Sebold provides in her novel.
But though Jackson creates a beautiful world for Susie, one gets the feeling that he spends too long up there, and we miss the development of her family down below: Jack and Abigail’s dissolving marriage, Buckley’s affected childhood, Grandma Lynn’s evolution and Lindsey’s ability to succeed through it all – stories that can only be hinted at in a 2 hour and 15 minute film. Jackson gives us enough for a good time at the cinema, but it’s hard to leave the theatre without wishing for a little more of the remaining Salmons; less of the visually impressive afterlife, and more than just the bare bones of the lives that remain on earth.
Julia LeConte
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