The Lovely Bones
2009 · Directed by Peter Jackson
Original language: English
- fantasy
- drama
The story
After being brutally murdered, 14-year-old Susie Salmon watches from heaven over her grief-stricken family -- and her killer. As she observes their daily lives, she must balance her thirst for revenge with her desire for her family to heal.
What it’s like
Warm amber interiors and autumn-brown suburban streets give the 1970s family home a faded, lived-in look, while the afterlife sequences burst into saturated, storybook colour: fields of flowers, pastel skies, a glowing in-between world rendered with heavy visual effects. The camera drifts through rooms and across the neighbourhood with a floating, watchful patience, and the ambient, piano-threaded score stays soft and sorrowful. Its vibe is wistful, aching and dreamlike, with grief as the constant undertow. The pace is measured and often lingers on the quiet textures of ordinary days. The central arc follows a grieving family slowly fracturing and reknitting, and a young girl weighing the wish for justice against the need to let go. Intensity is high. The film depicts the sexual assault and murder of a child, with the violence brief but disturbing rather than gory, and an unsettling menace runs through much of the middle. It is not gentle. It suits viewers who want a melancholic, visually lush drama about loss and healing and can sit with serious, harrowing subject matter.
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