BEFORE: Kevin Spacey's going to wrap up the month for me, as he carries over from "The Big Kahuna".
THE PLOT: An emotionally-beaten man with his young daughter moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland to reclaim his life.
AFTER: This project has taken me down some pretty weird mental paths. Maybe you're familiar with cooking competitions, where a chef might be asked to create a dish that represents their entire cooking career on a plate, or even in one bite. The last three nights have basically represented my career (not exactly, metaphorically) through Kevin Spacey films. "Swimming with Sharks" could stand for my career in film, "The Big Kahuna" could represent my experiences with the advertising industry, and now it's the story of a man becoming a writer, which could stand for my own "third act", this whole movie blog thing, which is as close as I seem to get to writing.
(If I get squashed by a bus tomorrow, my eulogist has it easy - just read these last three blog posts, and there's my career...)
I'm not too familiar with the work of director Lasse Hallstrom, but this is based on a novel by the author of "Brokeback Mountain", so make of that what you will. It doesn't exactly feel like everyone here is circling the drain or anything, but there's a certain amount of rack and ruin in everyone's lives, or making the best out of bad situations. I can't help feel like this was all a metaphor for something, but if so, then it feels slightly out of reach. What's the point being made, here, the fact that everything is pointless? I'm not sure that should count.
I get that some people don't find their purpose until late in life, fine. Barring that, this film seems to be about healing, moving on, and then trying to fit in at a new location. When that new location happens to be Newfoundland, that's when things get weird. They eat strange food there, they talk funny and they like to fish. And drink. Spacey's character knows a bit about printing newspapers, but instead gets drafted into being a reporter, covering the manifests of ships that come to town, plus car accidents. It's finding a way to do that and capture the public's interest at the same time that's the real trick.
There are more instances of people being quirky - some of which are later explained, some of which are not. Those that are not may leave you scratching your head. I don't want to describe too much here, regarding dead bodies and moving houses, "ghosts" and family secrets, but there seems to be a lot of material here, I'm just not sure it all adds up to a coherent whole.
If you put a gun to my head and forced me to say what this all means (and I don't know why you would, you seemed like such a nice person...) I'd have to point out that sometimes you end up in a relationship situation that's less than ideal, and it's important to realize that things can get better, even if that sometimes takes a bad accident or a move to Canada or learning to sail a boat. You can go somewhere else and form a new family, and with luck the new one might be slightly less screwed up than the old one. Are we clear on this? Can you please put the gun down now? Thanks.
But if more movies were like this, I think I'd slowly come around to the belief that life has no meaning, other than that which we impart upon it. That philosophy is not as negative as it might seem, in fact it serves to make the search for meaning even more crucial.
Also starring Judi Dench (last seen in "The Chronicles of Riddick"), Julianne Moore (last seen in "Game Change"), Cate Blanchett (last seen in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "Courage Under Fire"), Pete Postelthwaite (last seen in "The Town"), Rhys Ifans (last seen in "The Amazing Spider-Man"), Gordon Pinsent, Jason Behr, with cameos from Larry Pine, Robert Joy.
RATING: 4 out of 10 squidburgers
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