For those keeping score at home, in an effort to scope out the true award season 2009 question marks out there, last week we read the script for Clint Eastwood‘s soft-serve sports-beat-social ills in South Africa, “Invictus.” This week, we inspect Peter Jackson‘s follow-up to “King Kong,” his adaptation of Alice Sebold’s best seller, “The Lovely Bones,” in hopes of gleaning its Oscar chances.
Reelin‘ in the Years is the first of 16 songs mentioned throughout Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyen, and Peter Jackson’s adaptation, “The Lovely Bones.” Steely Dan‘s relentlessly never-ending guitar solo carries us through the title sequence montage of Susie Salmon’s (Saoirse Ronan, Academy-nominated young one from “Atonement“) young life leading up to her 14th year as seen from inside a snow globe (it gets moved around). Sure, Steely Dan’s rollicking-good wagon of annoying is text book 1970’s reference for film (see “For the Love of the Game“) and seeing it used immediately had us worried, but FWPBPJ’s script is so technically well written that we slid on by, riding a wave of precise description. While, after reading “The Lovely Bones,” we still worry about the finished product (trailer sucks, we blame the music, the slo-mo, and broad stroke, silly-colored CGI), here’s hoping Jackson’s direction and visual sense, and a potentially saucy turn by Susan Sarandon as the Grandma Lynn lift this B++ script up above its shortcomings.
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (or, the Gist of It): 14-year-old Susie Salmon, an innocent girl growing up in an unremarkable suburb of Philadelphia, Pa, tells the story of how she was murdered and how her family deals with her death and mystery of her murder. We know Susie’s dead from the get-go (no spoiler there). She handles the play-by-play from an in-between heaven and earth type purgatory (where emotions create the world around you) watching her family move through grief. Sounds like the very bad Robin Williams starrer “What Dreams May Come,” we know (and from the looks of the trailer, the fantastical nature of the in-between place has a similar CGI-heavy approach). But hey, remember what we said about the beautiful descriptions? We should add, save some of the voice-over, the dialogue is natural and flows easily.
Who Loves You? Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci) is the creepy, sweaty widower at the end of the street who’s meticulous about his immaculate dollhouse (total warning sign). Like the Salmon Family’s all-seeing snow globe, at different times, we get a view of the world from a window in Mr. Harvey’s dollhouse. Harvey is portrayed very closely to how he was in Sebold’s novel; functional, harmless widower on the outside, psychopathic sick freak on the inside who kils animals to feed the demon when he can’t get at a fresh little human. At the end of the 1st act, Susie (who reassures us in voice-over that this was a time before American parents told their kids to beware sexual predators; insert Polanski joke here____) is lured by Mr. Harvey in a “fort” he’s made in a local corn field. Impressed, but freaked by Harvey once inside, Susie tries to escape but is overpowered, raped, then killed (all while “Who Loves You?” by the Four Seasons plays). Sounds creepy, right? It is. And sequences like this and other are crafted so well, tightly edited on the page before the camera rolls, expressly clear and engaging. Which leads us to think —
How Great Thou Art. If Alexander Payne is the king of understated, painfully real, darkly comedic characters, then FWPBPJ are the queens of well-thought-out sequences of deftly orchestrated parallel action. Think ‘LOTR’ and the 8 million plus scenes of one guy running cut against another guy running, and so on and so on and so on. We don’t normally think of the ‘LOTR’ flicks as large ensemble character pieces (in the vein of “Nashville” or “Boogie Nights”), but they are and Jackson plays “The Lovely Bones” the same way. He, Walsh, and Boyen spread the story out across the entire Salmon family, Susie’s love interest, her murderer, and a girl Susie barely knew. We get a strong sense (some, much stronger than others) of how the Susie’s death and the weight of her murder crushes her family. Jack (Marky Mark Walberg) is the obsessive, guilt-paralyzed father, Abigail (Rachel Weisz) is the deadened mother who floats away, Lindsey (newcomer Rose McIver) is the sister who moves on, and Lynn (Susan Sarandon) is alcoholic grandmother who moves back in to help glue the family back together.
Before, during, and after the turning points of the script, we check in with the main characters, seeing where they are in they’re grief or their pursuit of the murderer. Most of these moments are beautifully written and bring the lead characters one step closer and two steps further away from one another and where they need to go.
Look At Me. For the entirety of the story, Susie Salmon tells her story from heaven, but we see her existing in the “in-between place,” a place not quite heaven, still tied to what goes on among the living. As the story progresses and Susie tells us what transpired after her death, she is largely relegated to sitting or standing, watching what we’re watching from the in-between. She reacts after we react and it adds a stale extra layer to the script that feels extraneous. Add to that massive CGI effects and the time the audience spends with Susie in the in-between could seem all the more tedious, keeping us from fully investing in the family’s story. Same goes for the narration; it sticks out at odd moments.
Baby‘s On Fire (or, What Works): The scope of the script and the shared weight the character carry (with the exception of Abigail Salmon’s story), the visceral moments (when Susie is killed and crosses over from the living, tumbling through worlds, when her sister Lindsey breaks into Harvey’s house) are all written incredibly well, shots detailed on the page without ever reading like camera direction. Other high points? Grandma Lynn; her character, though small, has the most fire (and, incidentally, she wins best description line of the script, “She’s pissed-as-a-fart”).
Driving Me Backwards (or What Doesn’t Work): The third act, but its not a total bust. The constant stream of seventies pop songs (see below), the main character watching it all happen from the great beyond
Yeah Sure It‘s Got Problems, but What About Awards Potential? All remains to be seen, but we have a sneaking suspicion that Susan Sarandon could knock this one out of the park, nabbing herself a best supporting nom. Because of a total lack of buzz, we’re thinking that could be it, if anything at all. Adapted Screenplay? Maybe. If there is a big lack of big time candidates.
Possible “Lovely Bones“ Soundtrack According to What Songs Were Mentioned in the Script. Note all the Brian Eno which makes sense because Eno himself composed the score.
1. Reelin’ in the Years – Steely Dan
2. Who Loves You? – The Four Seasons
3. Don’t Ask Me Questions – Graham Parker
4. After hours – The Velvet Underground
5. Coming Back to Me – Jefferson Airplane
6. How Great Thou Art – traditonal
7. Cherish – David Cassidy
8. Cry – 10CC
8. Long Cool Woman in a Tall Black Dress – The Hollies
9. Let your love flow – Bellamy Brothers
10. Look at me – John Lennon
11. Baby’s on Fire – Brian Eno
12. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue – Graham Bonnet
13. Driving Me Backwards – Brian Eno
14. Song of the Siren – This Mortal Coil
15. The Big Ship – Brian Eno
16. Celtic Swing – Van Morrison
We also made a nice little Mp3 soundtrack playlist for you of all these songs that will only be up as a limited time offer. Get it while you can. — Andrew Hart