The Bones Are Rotting

About ten days ago, I was watching The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers and Peter Jackson’s genius clicked for me. I firmly believe that no other person had the combination of vision and technical knowledge to bring that epic trilogy to life. From finding the previously unknown or unappreciated talents necessary to best bring the characters to life to his integration of the best technology of the time, Jackson established himself as an insightful filmmaker with a particularly acute attention to detail. Sadly Jackson followed up his successful popular mainstream effort with the disappointing King Kong.


However, the success of the Blomkamp directed and Jackson produced District 9 gave Jackson a chance for redemption in 2009. Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s wildly popular novel, “The Lovely Bones”, was highly anticipated but proved to be another post-LoTR disappointment.

The trailer for The Lovely Bones showcases a bright and energetic style that, in contrast to the clearly dark subject matter, promised a visually abstract and stunning examination of a young girl’s interaction with the events of her own death. Instead Jackson delivers a jumbled and confusing story with no conclusive point or message, weak dialogue, and even weaker visuals. I am tempted to criticize the acting as well but one can only blame Jackson for writing and directing a movie with Jack Salmon’s (Wahlberg) awkward monologue about the important lessons learned from putting ships in bottles. However Jack’s role as the permed and insane father of Susie Salmon (Ronan), the murdered 14 year-old narrator, hardly seems worth mention as Jackson cannot seem to decide what the plot is. Is it the destruction of a mother unable to cope with the death of her daughter and her husband’s looming insanity, Abigail Salmon (Weisz)? Maybe it is the story of the murdered girl’s suspicious sister, Linsday Salmon (McIver). Perhaps it is the story of a girl coming to terms with her ambiguously carried out murder. The lack of surety in Jackson’s storytelling suggests that it is about all of these stories and yet he cannot focus or draw out any of them specifically, creating a confusing jumble characters destroyed by a horrible crime. Furthermore Jackson incorporates Susie’s voyeurism of the unbelievably suspicious, creepy, and cryptic George Harvey (Tucci) from her otherworldly pagoda.

From there it is difficult to say where the plot is going. Combine that with Susie’s cheesy “in-between” sequences that overemphasize the 70s setting and look like what a child might imagine an acid trip looks and you have a fairly weak attempt to cinematically recreate a book that delves into the complex familial results of the brutal rape and murder of one of their members. The brutality is what Jackson cannot adequately capture. His straightforward brand of storytelling works with the inherent philosophical strivings of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy because it requires little work on his part. The environmental, anti-industrial, anti-corporate, anti-materialist themes are implicit within the action itself. While Jackson should be lauded for avoiding the racist features of Tolkien’s classic, what previously appeared to be a bold and moral choice is now revealed to be Jackson’s desire to avoid controversy (likely due to his personal enjoyment of mainstream success after he quit making his earlier slasher comedies). The storytelling in “The Lovely Bones”, however, is less straightforward and the message depends on Sebold’s precise story. Jackson keeping Susie’s conclusive understanding of her death verbatim is disingenuous and nonsensical without the events leading to her conclusion. Jackson’s refusal to portray or even acknowledge the brutality of the rape or that Harvey has sexual desires for Susie’s sister lessens the complexity of his character, especially considering that Sebold goes into the brutality of Harvey’s upbringing so much so that Susie feels sorry for him. Rather Jackson simplifies his character into the “creepy bad guy” role. Jackson’s neglect for the sexual complexity of the characters goes so far that he equates Susie’s post-mortem desire to have sex despite her rape to a simple kiss. Jackson’s view of the world reflects that of a child when the story demands an adult.

This leaves two possibilities; either Jackson falls into the same trap as Zack Snyder’s Watchmen in attempting to represent an impossibly complex story within the time frame of a major motion picture or the story is simply too adult for Jackson’s artistic ability. Jackson’s commitment to adhere to a PG-13-rating reflects artistic cowardice (regardless of his supposed reasons) and would be better suited for a serious artist, such as Aronofsky who proved that he could handle complex and graphic themes with artistic integrity in his Requiem for a Dream (he even fought to maintain his R-rating in order to keep the coherence of his story). Hopefully Jackson’s Hobbit will be a return to the fantasy genre in which he thrives.