Lovely Bones meets family expectations, but not critics
Meredith Wish
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Arts & Entertainment
The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson, creates emotion in waves: humor, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Perspectives constantly change from the real world to the spiritual world, and with each alteration of reality, so changes the audience's mood. However, though this movie is quite lovely to watch, the premises juxtaposed with the beautiful CGI (computer generated imagery) did not match.
For those who are out of the loop, The Lovely Bones is an adaptation of the novel by Alice Sebold. The narrative is told through the perspective of the late Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). Salmon is a 14-year-old girl who was murdered by a member of her neighborhood, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), who has seemed to commit the perfect crime.
Unable to let go of her past life and unable to move forward to heaven, Salmon is in the "in-between." The jealousy she possesses toward the people she loved going onward in life keeps her fixed. As long as she stays fixated on her anger towards her killer, she is able to "will the living" to possess the same wrath. In spite of this, the manipulations of the dead habitually go awry.
The movie initially lacks in the accuracy of the original plot. The novel by Sebold was not meant to be a PG-13 film. In the book, Salmon is raped, murdered, and her body hacked into parts. In the film, the audience is given the details.
In an interview Ronan said, "I think it's kind of the easy route to put that kind of scene in. It can make people too disturbed.The way that we did [it] was a very tasteful way to do it. I think it is best to just leave it up to the audience's imagination, and sometimes that can even be stronger."
The principle of both the book and the film is about moving forward with life after the horrific event of a child's murder, eventually finding hope. The film loses its shock value and disturbance with the CGI. Salmon's "in-between" is a mixture of beautiful and dark aspects from her past. Though the CGI portions create a tremendous impact, it loses the darkness of the plot. Hope is found almost immediately after the murder, when it should have been found more toward the end.
For those who are out of the loop, The Lovely Bones is an adaptation of the novel by Alice Sebold. The narrative is told through the perspective of the late Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). Salmon is a 14-year-old girl who was murdered by a member of her neighborhood, George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), who has seemed to commit the perfect crime.
Unable to let go of her past life and unable to move forward to heaven, Salmon is in the "in-between." The jealousy she possesses toward the people she loved going onward in life keeps her fixed. As long as she stays fixated on her anger towards her killer, she is able to "will the living" to possess the same wrath. In spite of this, the manipulations of the dead habitually go awry.
The movie initially lacks in the accuracy of the original plot. The novel by Sebold was not meant to be a PG-13 film. In the book, Salmon is raped, murdered, and her body hacked into parts. In the film, the audience is given the details.
In an interview Ronan said, "I think it's kind of the easy route to put that kind of scene in. It can make people too disturbed.The way that we did [it] was a very tasteful way to do it. I think it is best to just leave it up to the audience's imagination, and sometimes that can even be stronger."
The principle of both the book and the film is about moving forward with life after the horrific event of a child's murder, eventually finding hope. The film loses its shock value and disturbance with the CGI. Salmon's "in-between" is a mixture of beautiful and dark aspects from her past. Though the CGI portions create a tremendous impact, it loses the darkness of the plot. Hope is found almost immediately after the murder, when it should have been found more toward the end.
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