Weighing in on 'The Lovely Bones'

By Sarah Sluis

Many of the people turning out to see The Lovely Bones on Friday will have read Alice Sebold's haunting book. Told from the perspective of a dead girl, Susie Salmon, after she is raped and murdered, the book brought insight into the aftereffects of such a misunderstood and shrouded crime. Profoundly nuanced, its shaded morality gave its characters emotionally complex reactions to the tragedy.

After reading Alice Sebold's memoir of her own brutal rape, Lucky, I felt I understood The Lovely Bones even more: being a victim of such a terrible crime leads you to experience events as though they are outside yourself. You can easily lose a sense of agency. Instead, you often feel as though you are watching things happen from above. Susie narrating the events going on in her family from heaven is not much different than how she might have experienced life had she been raped but not murdered.

Sadly, much of this is lost in Peter Jackson's interpretation of The Lovely Bones, which completely misses the tone of the book. Most grating is his vision of heaven. He seems more interested in giving his special-effects company a lot of work than motivating the move to fantasy. The surroundings, rich and lush and detailed, stick out from the rest of the movie.

Many people have praised the performances in the movie (and I agree with the assessment that Stanley Tucci has a standout role), but some lines sounded really, really bad and misdelivered to my ears. I saw the actor instead of the character. I suspected part of this was related to the tone. When you're trying to make something wispy and ephemeral, and fail, it can lead to dialogue that feels quite odd.

Finally, there's the rape and murder scene. Given that a child is involved, and the movie's PG-13 rating, it's not surprising that this vicious act is omitted. But instead, Jackson moves quickly from the terror of anticipation to a confusing scene where at first she's actually fleeing, and then she's fleeing in her mind, before finally pausing for a brief moment when she realizes what's happened to her. It missed the mark for me, to the point where I was sitting in the movie theatre in disbelief about how the movie was skipping over one of the most painful, but necessary, moments of the story. What I really wanted was a still moment where the audience was forced to dwell on what was happening. Though I already thought the tone was messed up by then, this really sealed it for me.

This omission will be a comfort to some, and for others it may be all they need to conjure up enough horror. Hollywood Elsewhere, for example was happy with the decision, explaining "I really, really didn't want to go there, even glancingly," and liked Jackson's "decision to show her escaping from her own death, running away from something that has happened but is so horrible that she instantly imagines or wills herself into a fantasy-escape mode." For me, it was not enough to carry through the rest of the movie. In the book, the rape and murder is always on your mind, and it's always on the characters' minds. I didn't feel that way watching the movie.

Given the subject matter, this is the kind of movie that people will see only if motivated by must-see reviews touting its artistic merit. Not many people want to be subjected to a Schindler's List if critics are coming out calling it "so-so." By comparison, Precious has garnered glowing reviews. It, too, shows the rape of a child (much more graphically) and her escaping to a fantasy world. Compared to the elaborate world created by Jackson, her escapist moments are downright spare, but the movie works by keeping us grounded in Precious' dismal reality. Translating Alice Sebold's prose to film, which requires depicting these events on-screen instead of in one's head, is a tall order, so it's not a huge surprise that Jackson didn't succeed. Those that have read the book should skip it or go in with managed expectations.

First peek at Peter Jackson's 'The Lovely Bones'

By Sarah Sluis

Alice Sebold's 2002 novel The Lovely Bones was the kind of book you could never imagine being adapted for the big screen: its main character is a young girl who has been raped and murdered. From her perch in heaven, she observes her family and the killer in the aftermath, narrating both her story and theirs. It's told in a non-sequential structure, with plenty of digressions, flashbacks, and flashforwards that tightly control the reading experience. Despite these challenges, the novel was acquired before it even became a bestseller.

Paramount, it seems, feels it has a winner, and moved up its release from March to awards season, December 11th. After a preview on "Entertainment Tonight," the trailer was just released online, and will be shown before screenings of Julie & Julia, to a suitably female, literary-oriented audience.

My initial reaction to the trailer was mixed. They start with the first line from the book, "My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie," giving readers an assurance of the film's literary authenticity. But the images of Susie's heaven are surprising, much different from what you'd imagine from reading the book. Still, I trust Peter Jackson to interweave fantasy with the narrative. Elijah Wood's intermittent visions of himself with the ring in Lord of the Rings worked quite well, often contrasting a high-energy sequence with the more dreamlike vision, and I anticipate Jackson will be able to accomplish a similar feat in Bones.

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is the disconnect between the horrible tragedies in the book (the murder, grieving family, etc.) and the distant, ethereal, wise tone with which Susie narrates. While the trailer abandons the voice-over halfway though, instead showing us images of the family making passionate but amateur attempts to track down Susie's killer, I hope that Jackson makes a point to include Susie's voice throughout the movie, despite the tonal difficulties that may cause.

The cast includes two Oscar winners and two nominees. Mark Wahlberg (nominee) and Rachel Weisz (winner) star as the Salmon parents, Susan Sarandon (winner) plays the Grandma, and Saoirse Ronan (nominee, Atonement) plays fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon. If the movie plays like the book, it will be strongly female-oriented. However, Wahlberg's character has the same protectionist instinct that appealed to viewers of Taken, the surprise kidnapping hit that starred Liam Neeson, which I think improves the movie's commercial prospects. While The Lovely Bones doesn't scream "Oscar" the way an old-fashioned costume drama does, if it delivers on its trailer I expect it will be among the ten nominees for Best Picture at the Oscars, along with a healthy smattering of nominations for its cast and crew.