THE LOVELY BONES 3.5**** (almost 4****)
I had been looking forward to this movie for some time, especially once I found out that Peter Jackson, director of the “Lord of The Rings” trilogy, would be the director. I, along with millions of others have read the critically acclaimed best-selling novel by Alice Sebold upon which the movie is based. All the readers were wondering with much anticipation and angst about how it would be done as a movie. The adaptation is set during the 1970s and is narrated by the voice of a 14 year old girl named Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan). Susie recalls the ordinary life she was living with her younger brother and sister and her parents Jack and Abigail (Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz), up until she was raped and murdered by a serial killer (Stanley Tucci) In the narration,. Susie reveals that she is neither alive nor dead because she is stuck somewhere between Heaven and Earth. She cannot let go of her family and they cannot move on from her memory, especially her father who loved her so and is obsessed with finding her body and her killer. We see Susie struggling with her desire for vengeance against her killer and her desire for her family to heal.

I liked the movie very much and, to begin with, appreciate Jackson’s decision to take a somewhat soft and gentle approach at the beginning of the movie in that he does hot show the brutal rape and murder on the screen of Susie even though it was described in the book. This was a crucial decision in that it set the tone for the movie. Instead of a “Bloody Bones” story, we have a “Lovely Bones” story that focuses on the ever perplexing and fascinating mysteries of life and death and whether an after-death soul, such as Susie’s, can communicate, can affect, can touch in even the slightest way the living that are left behind. Even if not, can Susie see and feel, but not touch, those left behind. The story also portrays Susie in an ever changing mid-heaven where her soul and others’ souls reside until certain issues are resolved. Jackson does a marvelous job with the CGI to create this visual panorama of what envelopes Susie , what Susie sees and what she generates with her feelings in this mid-heaven.

This is a wonderful, heart-rendering story of the love of a family and, especially, the very deep love between a father and daughter and how that intense love could/maybe serve as a bridge between the living and the dead. The story is quite thought provoking on many levels and should ,if nothing else, cause you to treasure every single moment of your life and to live those moments wisely, lovingly and joyfully…after all, we never know when it will end.

Lastly the acting is superb. Saoirse Ronan, as Susie, commands the screen with her ethereal beauty and soul. She hauntingly portrays a lovely, young girl who knows that she’s been robbed of her youth, her future and all that it could have been. Other standouts are Wahlberg as the forlorn, at times desperate, father . But the show stopper is Stanley Tucci as the cunning, cold-hearted, evil-incarnate serial killer. His performance is similar in some ways to that of Anthony Hopkins in The Silence Of The Lambs. I expect that Ronan, as Susie, will be nominated for Best Actress and Tucci for Best Supporting Actor and Tucci will be a favorite to win. Also the movie and Director will be nominated.

Clark