I recently re-read Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, by no means a work of ground breaking literary genius, but certainly a very enjoyable novel. Curious what Peter Jackson made of the source material, me and the Mrs went to see it last Wednesday.
Big Mistake.
Peter Jackson certainly has a proven track record of adapting novels to the big screen, and in Heavenly Creatures, he created another world, apart from reality, much like the ‘in-between’ featured in The Lovely Bones, so understandably, I had not prepared myself for just how awful this film was.
The most fundamental problem here is a complete and utter misunderstanding of the book, which is about the effect that the death of a 14 year old girl has on her family and friends, and their relationships with each other, something that is barely touched on in the film.
“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence” narrates Susie Salmon, the murdered girl, towards the end of the film (as she does in the book), but here, it makes little sense.
The film instead, focuses on Susie’s father trying to find proof her murderer is a man living just down the road from them. As, from the moment of her death, you are made fully aware of the identity of Susie’s killer, there is no tension, or surprise.
The film was given a 12A certificate, and was obviously written, filmed and edited in order the get it’s largest possibly audience, turning it into a family film, a detective story, neither of which it should have been, the rape and murder of a young girl is hardly family film material, so much so, that the rape is never mentioned.
Susie’s ‘in-between’ is so overly stylised that it hurt my eyes, all fluffy CGI nonsense. There’s a cloying sentimentality running throughout, you know, the kind that makes you wretch.
Peter Jackson, what happened?
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