The Lovely Bones

Year: 2009
Running time: 135 minutes
Certificate: 12
Language: English
Screenplay: Fran Walsh, Phillipa Boyens, Peter Jackson
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, Michael Imperioli, Rose McIver

Susie's heaven seems lonely.

Based on the hugely popular novel by Alice Sebold, Peter Jackson tackles something a little smaller than Lord of the Rings and King Kong, and makes something that is at once engaging and underwhelming, seemingly unsure of what it wants to be and say.

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is a typical teenager in 1970s Pennsylvania, experiencing the first blushes of love, when she is raped and murdered by neighbourhood freakazoid George Harvey (Stanley Tucci). Narrating her life from some kind of heavenly holding area above, she watches while her family struggle to come to terms with her death.

The film is strongest in the earth-bound scenes, including the electric tension as Susie's sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) acts on her suspicions, turning amateur detective, and early scenes filling in the details of Susie's life through a hazy 70s lens, everything lent a strong sense of bitter sadness, knowing as we do that this is a life with promise that was all cut cruelly short. It's why I think Jackson goes all-out in the depiction of Susie's afterlife; the distressing fact of Susie's brutal death, and the toll it takes on her father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and mother Abigail (Rachel Weisz) requires tempering with the hope that somewhere, somehow, she's ok. Of course, this is a movie, so you can suspend disbelief enough for this, but this papering over the harsh reality that people that suffer at the hands of others like Susie likely don't have the chance for this sort of closure is never far from souring the moment.

It's never bad exactly, but it is tonally uneven, which is sometimes quite jarring, and I can never get away from the fact that while for most people Harvey's death would seem the most appropriate way to pay for his crimes, I felt that in a way he managed to escape without ever really having to face justice, which was somewhat unsatisfying, but also true to life I suppose.

Tragedy looms.

Visually, it is perhaps unsurprising that Jackson's cinematic paintbrush excels, but while Susie's world-after-death is frequently eye-poppingly gorgeous, it is the colour palette and stylistic choices employed to depict the 1973 Pennsylvanian Winter that is truly eye-catching; the film is never less than beautiful. But as lovely-looking as The Lovely Bones is (and it is), it is the two performances at its centre that are the reasons it succeeds in spite of Jackson, along with co-writers Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens frequently fumbling the storytelling. Stanley Tucci's turn as serial killer George Harvey is incredible, holding your attention as a sad sack nobody who's a monster under the surface, but matching the seasoned pro every step of the way is Saoirse Ronan as Susie, giving the tragic young girl life and light, making Susie's horrific fate all the more upsetting. It's no surprise at all that Ronan has gone on to become one of the very best actresses working today.

It has its shortcomings, but the cinematography and performances from Tucci and Ronan make it worth trying.

Score: 6/10

The Lovely Bones is a film that genuinely split opinion, which considering it can't even make its own mind up about what it wants to be, doesn't really surprise me. These examples from Roger Ebert and The Telegraph quite viscerally despise it, but Ian Freer at Empire was really quite taken with it.