AsMoral Wrote:Peter Jackson’s Broken “Bones”

Several years ago I read a haunting and beautiful story by Alice Sebold about a young girl who helps her family move on and heal from the other side after her untimely demise.
The book started with a description of a snow globe and a young girl looking at it with wonder as her father lovingly explained that within, the penguin figurine is in a perfect world.
This set the tone for the entire story that followed. How, under the glass dome of tragedy, a perfect world can exist.

“My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.”

Thus began the tale of Susie Salmon and an excursion into pain and the long road to healing as a family tries to come to terms with the loss of a daughter, sister and friend.

The book was layered and felt like a vacant field covered in snow. Desolate yet beautiful. You could feel the despair of the family and group of rag-tag friends as they tried to piece their lives back together. The novel was surreal and slowly revealed the characters and their stories and their connection to Susie.
When word came about that director Peter Jackson would undertake transforming the beloved novel into a movie many people cried foul. They said the book was “unfilmable” due to its complexity and the fact that the entire novel is narrated by the deceased as she tries to help her family and friends heal from the “In between”, a beautiful place between heaven and earth made up of places from the life she knew and the afterlife that is to be.

For the most part, detractor fears are justified. The film surprisingly works with the narration and the awesome effect of loneliness, tragedy and despair is captured beautifully. Where the film doesn’t work is where it should have counted the most. The characters are all one dimensional, save for Susie played by Saoirse Ronan. She is beautiful and homely at the same time with wide blue eyes that convey so much emotion that at times the viewer can easily get lost in them and the emotions the actress can evoke with them is astounding.

Susie’s immediate family spends a lot of time grieving, crying and smashing things out of anger and frustration as the murder investigation goes cold. They feel Susie all around her, at least they say they do, but unlike the book there is no time spent to indicate if this is true or not. We simply have to take their word for it.

Other than these outward bursts there is nothing to indicate just how torn they are. Even Susie’s sister, whom the book painted as an independent thinker, constantly questioning authority and refusing to let her sister’s memory fade, is portrayed as an invisible member of the family until the final act of the film.

Then there is Susan Sarandon playing the alcoholic but well meaning grandmother. She serves no purpose in the film other than to drink, be whimsical and irreverent. This is waste of talent and with the character being stripped of age and wisdom, all we get is a sound bite and a montage of wackiness.

Aside from the actress playing Susie and an incredible turn by Stanley Tucci as the killer Mr. Harvey, the film spends a good part of its 2 hour and 16 minute runtime showing Susie’s heaven as an ever changing and beautiful world; a sharp contrast to the bleak reality she has left behind.

Because so much character development has been trimmed to fit within a respectable time-frame we never learn about Susie’s friends who in the book play an integral part of solving the mystery of Susie’s murder.

They are just bookends here. From the beautiful Ray Singh, Susie’s would-be boyfriend whom in the book she comes back to in a haunting moment to say goodbye (The film foregoes this for the most part and alters the impact heavily by making it more innocent) to the psychic young woman and classmate of Susie who knows of the dead around her and knows that Susie is still there, more vibrant than ever.

Still, Jackson is a painterly director, making words on a page spring to life. His efforts here just don’t do the novel justice and we are left with a cardboard cutout of a great novel. The names and places may be familiar but we feel disassociated from them, like looking at them through a window instead of through the eyes of a charismatic young girl taken from us too soon.

The Lovely Bones is still surprisingly good despite its flaws. Be warned, it is not a mystery, thriller or horror in any sense. It is a dramatic piece and may be slow-moving for some. The audience I was with groaned at the end and found the villains departure scene to not be vindictive enough. The novel presents the idea that there are bigger forces at work and perhaps the Mr. Harvey’s final scenes come at the hand of a higher power.

Because important narrative and Susie’s observations about life, pain and healing are greatly lost in the transition from print to screen the viewer can feel cheated. It is only after Susie has moved on that the wrongs can be righted and a family can truly heal.
I would recommend seeing this film, but first read the novel so you can appreciate the beauty of Susie
salmon and her world.

“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections — sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent — that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events my death brought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous lifeless body had been my life.”

Bluesman Mike Lindner Wrote:Tony, I've heard great things about the book, not so many about the movie. Can't check out either, though. I cannot bear thoughts about children being hurt. I just can't.

AsMoral Wrote:I too am the same. Harm to children and animals is bothersome to me and I derive no enjoyment from seeing this displayed.

The book and the film deal with the subject matter respectfully and neither degrade to tawdry exploitation. The book describes the death as quickly as it happens and spends only 1 short paragraph depiciting the act.

The movie takes a very interesting approach to describing what happened without showing a single thing. Susie, the character, isn't even aware of what has happened at first.

cobalt79 Wrote:I read the book years ago, hated it...absolutely hated it. I needed more vengence I think.
I won't go see the movie either.....hurt a child!!!! like that...and I want someone to suffer.

cobalt79 Wrote:Better give him to a tank of sharks...or gators...hungry ones.

cobalt79 Wrote:I read the book years ago, hated it...absolutely hated it. I needed more vengence I think.
I won't go see the movie either.....hurt a child!!!! like that...and I want someone to suffer.