The Light Between Oceans
/"She doesn't belong to us. We can't keep her."
Filmology Rating: 2.75 out of 4
In 2010 Derek Cianfrance brought us the story of a contemporary marriage with Blue Valentine, in 2012 he told us a story about the sins of the father with The Place Beyond the Pines, and now in 2016 he brings us a Hitchcockian melodrama with The Light Between Oceans. I’m a big fan of Cianfrance’s other two films and I went into the film excited because it has two of the best working actors today: Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander. I went in a fan of the actors and Cianfrance and I left still a fan of the actors but my level of admiration for Cianfrance diminished slightly.
The Great War has torn across the world; leaving many men dead, families torn apart, and those men who survived, soulless. This is where we find Tom Sherbourne, played by Michael Fassbender, when he arrives to little ocean town in Australia. Tom is broken when he arrives, hoping some isolated time on an island working as a lighthouse keeper will give him the inner peace he needs. Months pass but Tom still can’t seem to shake his depression until he sees Isabel Graysmark, played by Alicia Vikander. For both Tom and Isabel it’s love at first sight so the two decide to marry and journey off to the island. After a few years on the island, Isabel is grief stricken after having two miscarriages while Tom hides his grief by working night and day. Isabel starts to feel all hope is lost when she spots a rowboat floating near the island with the faint cry of a child coming from it. The couple discover the boat does indeed have a child but also a dead man that the couple assumes is the father. Isabel feels that her prayers have been answered with the delivery of the child but Tom questions if they should keep the child or let the authorities know about the new inhabitant to the island.
The film is incredibly slow paced but it has fantastic performances and gorgeous cinematography by Adam Arkapaw, who also shot last year’s Macbeth. Any frame of this movie could be taken out and put into a museum of modern art. The film is a visual masterpiece. At times I love the score by Alexandre Desplat but at times it sounds like he is reusing some of his scores from the Harry Potter films, and the score might hit some of the notes of the film a little hard on the head. You are meant to tear up at one moment so cue all of the strings and pianos and let the waterfalls down. I did feel myself falling into the trap during the film at one point but felt ashamed of it while walking out.
The slow pace of the film gets thrown out the window when the film switches focus to Hannah Roennfeldt, played by Rachel Weisz. The film doesn’t take the time to breathe on her life now that her husband and daughter were lost at sea. While with Tom and Isabel you get a feel for the everyday lives that they have on the island. You could make the case that life on the island is a lot slower and the pace on the mainland is fast, but that doesn’t make the characters interesting enough to get invested in. Weisz gives a fantastic performance just like the other two actors but the film doesn’t give her the time she deserves like it does to the other two.
While the film has breathtaking cinematography and fantastic performances, the length and pace of the film are its downfall. The film clocks in at 132 minutes and you begin to feel every second of the runtime toward the end of the film and then the moment you think the film could end, it continues. While the epilogue is rather good and it does finish paying off character arcs, I feel the film may have been stronger without it. Derek Cianfrance needs to work on his handling of third acts on film because he seems to lose his grasp and the film quickly unravels.
The Light Between Oceans should be a movie that everyone will be talking about when award season comes around but sadly most will forget the film even though the lights shine upon the cinematography and performances that are out in the long void of the sea.
Rating: Rent It
-Jonny G