Imagination is the key.By John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
"My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name, Susie. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973. I wasn't gone. I was alive in my own perfect world. But in my heart, I knew it wasn't perfect. My murderer still haunted me. My father had the pieces but he couldn't make them fit. I waited for justice but justice did not come." Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan)
Serial killer movies reached their apex with Silence of the Lambs, in part because the murders served largely as a vehicle to introduce the world to Hannibal Lecter, the greatest murderer of them all. Now Peter Jackson's supernatural Lovely Bones adaptation provides a companion in my imagination to that memorable thriller.
"Imagination" is my key word here because Bones is anything but realistic: A murdered 14 year old narrates from the afterlife about her murderer and her family, which she wants to see heal from their loss while she harbors the most human desire for revenge against the man who took her lovely life. The voice over is never overbearing or cheating at filling in information; it always provides a point of view about the unknowable world of the afterlife.
The first half of the film is a model of uncomfortable suspense as the murderer, played with creepy normalcy by Stanley Tucci, prepares the execution of his target, our already loveable heroine Susie Salmon. The last half incorporates surrealistic scenes of limbo and heaven with the clich?d scenario to find the murderer.
This film does better than most to parse the agony of a family's loss and at the same time speculate on the feelings of a spirit about her own losses and her own need, like her family's, to let go. Realists may not appreciate The Lovely Bones because it will satisfy none of their needs for CSI accuracy or just plain logic.
While at times mawkish with too much emphasis on the thriller aspect rather than the philosophical/psychological import, the film successfully immerses us in the agony of the family's loss and the reality of revenge, sometimes not a bad thing.
"His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead." James Joyce, "The Dead"
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain