Melancholic and beautiful, The Light Between Oceans is a languid love story that will have you reaching for the tissue box.
|||THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS
DIRECTOR: Derek Cianfrance
CAST: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz
CLASSIFICATION: 10-12 PG
RUNNING TIME: 133 minutes
RATING: ***
Melancholic and beautiful, The Light Between Oceans is a languid love story that will have you reaching for the tissue box. Adam Arkapaw’s cinematography captures all the romance of living a live on the edge of the ocean – the colourful sunsets, the dangers of sea storms, the allure of virgin, sandy beaches.
The sweeping, lush, even elegant images and score are at odds with the actions of the couple, though – she comes across as self-absorbed, he is indulgent of her wrong-doings – so all that effort that goes into creating this emotional response will eventually have you tossing the wet tissue at the screen.
Set in post-WWI Australia, it tells the story of a lighthouse keeper and his wife who live an idyllic life on their remote island, but are forced to confront the fact that there are people out there and their own actions have consequences beyond themselves.
It asks questions about what is family and whether parents stop being parents when their children no longer exist, but ultimately is it about the relationship between two broken people and what we do to make a loved one happy.
Tom Sherbourne (Fassbender) is a mentally scarred soldier who takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on an island, hoping to find peace after the terror of war. A quiet man, Tom courts the lively Isabel Graysmark (Vikander) and, once married, the two are fine with just each other for company.When a baby washes ashore, Isabel persuades Tom they should keep the baby as their own – after two miscarriages Isabel’s emotional state is fragile.
When her brothers died fighting in the war, did that mean she was no longer a sister, was an earlier question she had asked Tom. Now, this inability to have a child, what did this make her?
Still, any time someone in a movie says “we’re not doing anything wrong” they are, so the mess they are about to create is pretty much of their own doing, which rather undermines all the fine work of setting up these two as the people we are meant to feel sorry for when the bad things happen.
They name the child Lucy and are happy, but on holiday with Isabel’s family they find out more about the child’s biological family. Tom’s need to protect Isabel wars with his instinct to do the right thing, while Isabel is protective of her child and Lucy (Florence Clery) is old enough to ask questions.
Rachel Weisz is poignant and affecting as the devastated Hanna Roennfeldt, the biological mother of the baby who washed ashore, and her character is the one who ultimately goes through the biggest emotional arc. The three characters are set up for some huge tragic explosion, but the ending veers into melodrama.
If you liked Brooklyn, you will like this.Tom Sherbourne (Michael Fassbender) and Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander) are a childless couple who decide to keep a baby they find washed ashore, but there are consequences.