Light Between Oceans cries its way through tedium

Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender think about crying in The Light Between Oceans. Image courtesy Disney.

While leaving the theater on Tuesday evening on the way to a train home I realized I couldn't actually remember the name of the movie I just watched. I had to look at my notes to come up with the title, The Light Between Oceans, which is so perfectly generic it flutters its way through the mind within an instant. It's a title that screams bland, offering no intrigue but wrapped in a heavy handed metaphor that clearly must mean something important. It doesn’t really mean all that much, nor does the film the title introduces to audiences. The actual film is equally unremarkable, concerning the travails of a lighthouse keeper and his wife somewhere in Australia (albeit filmed in New Zealand) in the 1920s. The Light Between Oceans flirts with mediocrity, falling a slight step below that mark.

Occasions arise when the film bobs into charming in the first act, when stars Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander reveling in their wedded bliss in a satisfactory sequence that, sadly, teases a more interesting film. (At least, more interesting than the one director Derek Cianfrance, who also wrote the adaptation from the novel, delivers.) Their bliss, coming after a short romance between Fassbender's lonely and guilt-driven lighthouse keeper Tom Sherbourne, and Vikander's local girl Isabel, is sweet and endearing, showing off the inherent decency of Fassbender's Tom and the liveliness of Vikander's Isabel. It's akin to the Julia Childs half of Julie & Julia, a portrait of a loving couple that captivates from the magnetism between Meryl Streep and the perpetually underrated Stanley Tucci. Vikander and Fassbender don't quite have that level of rapport, but they do make for a enviable couple for the film's moderately endearing first act. And at least the early parts of the relationship explain how a couple living alone at a lighthouse can handle the isolation; they have each other, and that's just about all they need for a spell.

The Light Between Oceans starts to sink in act two, once Vikander becomes obsessed with motherhood – representing a fairly notable reversal in her previously noted personality – and the couple's decision to claim a lost infant as their own. It's at this point when the water works begin to flow and Vikander and Fassbender ugly cry as often as possible. (They're joined later by Rachel Weisz as the child's real mother; she more than holds her own in this contest.) The tears come across as more phony than real, presented in a more cinematic scope than as an organic reaction to the situations the characters find themselves in. It’s staged weeping built for award shows and to show the photogenic stars in a vulnerable state of mind, although it does sometimes feel as if the characters are infected by a terminal case of snot face.

What Cianfrance wants is a presentation of inner turmoil, with the morally rigid Tom debating the rightness of their decision. Yet Cianfrance doesn't appear to know how to accomplish that goal in an interesting fashion (ugly crying excluded); he doesn't focus enough on Tom's inner turmoil, and his efforts to toss in montages akin to the early days falters because of how poorly Cianfrance addresses the proverbial elephant in the room. Not like he didn’t have time to deal with this issue considering how much the film begins to drag in the final two thirds, lollygagging through a long second act and an interminable third act brightened solely by the reminder that Bryan Brown is still alive. Whatever point Cianfrance wanted to bring up in The Light Between Oceans exists somewhere within the morass of his final two acts and involves guilt, sins and temptation on some level presented without passion or excitement.

The Light Between Oceans is something of a tease. It's a movie about a lighthouse keeper in an era when lighthouses were vital that incorporates little of the dangers or interests the position has. It presents child abduction in an utterly boring way. It offers an interesting debate of the definition of parenthood, only to skirt away from the issue to push the plot forward. It comes close, sometimes, to resembling interesting, only to step away and test the audience's patience in the process. There isn't much more to say about The Light Between Oceans except to remark upon its frustrating fugacity and shrug.

Review: Two out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 132 minutes

Genre: Drama 
 

Ask Away

Target audience: People searching for ersatz prestige flicks.

Take the whole family?: Far too boring for kids to handle.

Theater or Netflix?: Just stay home and wait for it to come to you.

Academy Awards odds?: About time to break this thing out for the ramp up to Oscar season. I don't think this will do any real damage in the main categories, but the film does have some very solid costuming reflecting the era that might just justify a nomination.

Watch this instead?: It's tough to find a good film that matches The Light Between Oceans, so I'll go instead with A Simple Plan, Sam Raimi's terrific slow burn of a thriller about four people who quickly end up over their heads. It also does a better job of showing how guilt can become such an insidious little thing when it comes to illegal activities.