It is the vintage 1970's. Susie Salmon, a young high school girl (played by the sensational Saoirse Ronan of Atonement) is murdered. Her spirit is caught in the "in between", a dream world before heaven that is built of significant elements of reality, mostly those just before death. In the in between, Susie is able to watch her family crumble in despair, her hopeful boyfriend's eyes wander, and her murder case grow cold. Meanwhile back in the real world we watch as murdering neighbor George Harvey (played by a creepy Stanley Tucci) regains a familiar itch for brutality, and plans for the murder of Susie's sister Lindsey (Rose McIver).
It is impossible to give away many plot elements, as we walk into the film having seen a spoiling trailer that literally sums up the entire film. At face value it is forgivable that director Peter Jackson decided to go his own way and veer away from the famous book, but what he has somehow managed to do is handicap the entire film by deflating its greatest asset--mystery. We know Susie is going to die. We know Susie is trapped in a dream world. And most importantly--we know who the killer is.
Perhaps the revealing set-up would have worked if the film had been able to capture the drama or the hurt and the urgency of the family in the slightest bit. Instead Jackson seems intent on meandering the story with computer generated dream-world sequences, those that perhaps would have been considered awe-inspiring if it weren't caught deep in the wake of Avatar. But in The Lovely Bones, the special effects disrupt the story and try way too hard to be poetic. Poetry in anything--film, photography, writing, etc. is usually best when it is organically made, when it comes from within, when it isn't trying to force an overwhelming impact--the impact just culminates and lives on. True poetry is not savagely copied from others own creative inspiration, it is only copied when you hold so much respect for that said creator that it rewardingly pays tribute (Brian De Palma to Alfred Hitchcock for example). If creativity has to be copied and duplicated or remixed just enough with hopes of it being pawned off as their own--what does that say about the copiers own creativity?
Jackson has already proved a film poet of a different breed with The Lord of the Rings. He already proved he could mix drama with surrealistic horror in his best movie to date Heavenly Creatures. The Lovely Bones seems forced and jarring. Like a confused director settling on the middle-ground of huge and artistically intimate. The film is just so choppy and non-linear. The murder-mystery should have been trusted the old fashioned way and not strained to be inventive. The interesting opportunity is lost involving Susie's ghostly connection to her family, the opportunity is lost for the psychic girl to field the connection, the opportunity is lost to delve into the dark, sexual, dollhouse making murderer's mind--a skill beautifully toned in its disturbance with Heavenly Creatures.
The Lovely Bones is piled high with capable actors that give their all (other notable players--Mark Walhburg, Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz). But the story truly lacks depth and truly does not know how to get on its own two feet. For a movie set on struggling through being heart-felt it is odd that in the end we feel no justice is served at all. What a shame... this could have been one of the best movies of the year, and I was rooting for it.
GRADE: C -
