How painful is the movie The Lovely Bones? My God. I don't think I'll ever sit down to watch it again...it is far too much for me. Not painful in the typical way I use the adjective, like in saying it's a piece of crap like Hot Dog...The Movie and difficult to watch. But rather painful in that it ripped out my freakin' heart. I can only imagine how I'd feel if I had kids and watched this; I would never let them out of my sight again.I watched it last night and then couldn't sleep, and then slept but had nightmares about it, and then I got up to take a shower and it followed me there too. There have been few films I can think of that have haunted me so. Bergman's The Virgin Spring comes to mind, last year's Into the Wild stayed with me a while, and definitely Sidney Lumet's The Pawnbroker. That last one messed me up for like a week. And I think this one may last too.
Not to spoil the story or anything if you haven't heard of it yet or seen it, but it involves a young 14 year old girl who is murdered by a neighbor (we eventual find out he's a serial killer) and her family's attempt to deal, look for the killer, move on, etc. It doesn't specifically tell us she'd been raped but it's somewhat hinted at. So there you go, horrendous situation and story. So the normal story arc in these situations involve retribution and revenge, and as an audience that's where we then put our energy and mind to get us through the film, investing with hope that the killer will be caught or killed.
I think (no, I know) there's a lot of frustration for me with this movie specifically because I want some sort of Clint Eastwood dude to show up and torture this son of bitch. Like Dirty Harry from Sudden Impact, where he finds out a rape victim has started hunting down and killing her attackers, and then he decides to look the other way and then help her blow them away. Or at least like Liam Neeson's character in Taken. Instead, I feel the family and detectives drop the ball (and her mom leaves the family to deal with the crisis on her own instead of trying to catch the killer; ironic that she loses 1 child, and then leaves the other 2 for a couple of years to deal with the loss). There's plenty of ineptness to go around. I'm pissed at the detective who interviews the killer but then doesn't follow up, even though the killer had a huge doll house in his living room but doesn't have any children and lives alone and is a freakin' creeper! And I'm pissed that the sister finally has evidence he's the killer but wastes precious seconds to tell someone in deferment to her parents' reunion and in wasting time the killer's allowed to escape. And I'm pissed that various people, like her dad, just know that this guy is the killer and just can't do anything about it. So frustrating.
You know what else is frustrating??? Spoiler alert here, so you may not want to read if you're planning on seeing it. They never find her body. Because the killer keeps her corpse in a huge safe in his basement. At the end, when her sister should scream for someone to call the cops, he apparently has enough time to load the safe into the back of his truck and take off forever. It must weight like 200 lbs with her body in it but somehow he has enough time. Fucking frustrating. Where are you cops?!? And then he's dumping the safe (with her body in it) somewhere where it will never be seen again, and people are watching him slowly dumping this safe, and you just know they know there's something not right, and yet they do nothing about it.
I think why is because throughout the story she's still living on in this limbo/dream world supposedly between heaven and earth. So, she's not really gone, her body may be crammed into the safe, and her family has no idea where she is, but she's checking in on everything going on in the search for her killer, etc. up in limbo. So she's still 'going on', right, and we're supposed feel a bit better I guess because she's not really dead in the existentialist sense (not really fitting that her mom is reading Camus during an early scene, but Jackson may have just included this to let us know she's 'smart'). But no, her still up there is little consolation for me as a viewer or her family. That's what's heartbreaking about this film, is that you feel for the family, and I'm relating to them that they never find her body. I mean can you imagine that torture, of just not knowing? And then seeing him cart around her body (answers for the family) while no one does anything about it? Torture.
Something I didn't understand. One scene up in limbo, she meets other victims, and it's heartbreaking, and I don't understand why there's this one particular moment in which they gather. Is it time for them all to go the heaven together? And why? The killer isn't dead, or caught. In fact, at that very moment he escapes, and is going to kill another young girl. But for some reason they're all gathering at that moment. There's no closure with him still on the loose.
I guess that's the overall problem with these characters for me. They're moving on, dealing with their lives, while the danger is still there. Move on once the bastard is caught or killed I say. Do that much for her. The Lovely Bones refers to the people who have grown since her death, but where's the closure? They're moving on too soon! What's an apt analogy?? Like painting a house while it's still raining? Something like that.
Major spoiler alert again...the killer gets his in the end, but not in the way you'd expect. Since the scene doesn't have any other major characters in it, I think it's an add-on scene after test audiences wanted some sort of retribution. Spoiler...he slips on ice and falls and dies. Lame. He's obviously older when this happens, so in the meantime, while people are finding peace with closure and all the girls are up in limbo going off to heaven, he's still out there raping and killing little girls. I'm just saying.
I've been ranting about the story here, so you can see just how powerful it is. Other things in the movie...acting, editing, music (so disturbing as well), direction, color....they're all excellent. Filmically, spot on, but I still don't think I'll ever see it again. This is one of the only times I've said that because of how powerful a movie is instead of how horrible it is.
