The Light Between Oceans *** (2016, Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Jack Thompson, Bryan Brown, Anthony Hayes) – Movie Review

Derek Cianfrance’s first film since his edgy epic crime thriller The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) is a very different kind of movie, a classy old-style romantic drama about a World War One battle-scarred, world-weary lighthouse keeper, Tom Sherbourne, who meets the bright, fiery, young and lovely Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander). She just won’t let go of him and proposes that they marry so they can share a life together, living at the lighthouse off the coast of Western Australia where he’s just been offered a job.

Trouble comes in paradise when the new wife loses one baby, then another in childbirth. But then a miracle seems to happen, when they rescue a baby from a drifting rowboat in which the father has died. Tom needs to report the accident, but naturally Isabel wants to raise the baby as her own. Tom very reluctantly gives in to Isabel’s insisting, sobbing pressure, keeping the baby and even the costly silver rattle he finds in the boat.

[Spoiler alert] The family grow up happily together but, of course, then four years later… Well, then, obviously enter Rachel Weisz as the baby’s grief-stricken real mother, Hannah Roennfeldt, who has upset the locals by marrying a German.

Plush, romantic, picturesque and meticulous, The Light Between Oceans moves at a grandly important, regally stately pace with every dramatic shot punctuated with one of lovely wild scenery. Filmed in Stanley, a quiet seaside town in north-west Tasmania, it does look a treat, with great views and plenty of period atmosphere too. Yes, they can expect the mixed blessing of more tourists. Stanley is not going to be remote and quiet for much longer.

The movie runs near epic length at 135 minutes, and feels it, but it paces up as the story grips and takes a hold, though towards the end it feels rushed with far too much plotting to pack in in its final minutes. The film doesn’t even seem to end in the right place in the story – it’s either too early or too late, so you leave frustrated.

Remember The English Patient? This is very much a film for that kind of audience, relishing hand-wrenching emotional drama. Fassbender and Vikander are good, making a convincing and lovely troubled couple, Weisz gives a very dignified performance. All three are economical, suffering intensely but not extravagantly, keeping it real. Florence Clery sweetly plays little Lucy.

The film written for the screen by Cianfrance, based on M L Stedman’s novel. The story here feels contrived but in a reasonably satisfying literary way, like a melodramatic novel from the Victorian era, one that the Hollywood movie-makers of the Thirties would have gobbled up as a vehicle for, say, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. There are moving, tender and passionate moments in the film, but also there are the plot and character contrivances that seem mechanical and unsatisfying with this screenplay.

Cianfrance relies too heavily on composer Alexandre Desplat for emotional uplift when it should be there already, though Desplat’s swirling score is still attractive. Adam Arkapaw’s cinematography is so beautiful you could put very frame in an art museum. Yet a few sweaty, grungy shots would be great. Life on this island must have had its dirty moments too. That would make it seem real and not a gorgeous picture postcard.

It is good to have Jack Thompson and Bryan Brown back on screen again, as Tom’s friend Ralph Addicott and Hannah’s dad Septimus Potts, though they could have more to do. And Anthony Hayes gives a remarkably good performance as the police sergeant Vernon Knuckey. Jane Menelaus and Garry McDonald also stand out as Isabel’s parents.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

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