A lovely movie, a lovelier book

When I was reading Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the movie in my mind wasn’t like a fantasy with creatively composed scenes of flowers and magazine covers and endless summers with occasional rainshowers only for those moments you’re wearing fashionable rain gear.

Heaven, to me, was a place of unimaginable beauty and peace that I could only think of as bright but not glaring, before skipping on to the juicy plot points. The writer in me was also drawn in by the beauty of Sebold’s words that I hardly stopped to imagine what each of Susie Salmon’s heavens really looked like. So, when I first heard that Peter Jackson, who gave us The Lord of the Rings, was at the helm of the film adaptation, I was instantly curious about his visual approach. Let me say it this early: He didn’t disappoint me. Still, I wish he had three hours to tell the dead girl’s story.

The Lovely Bones is an arresting tale of a family’s road to healing when 14-year-old Susie is murdered by a child predator she mistakenly trusted, as observed by the same girl from the after-life. It’s raw and honest—and how could it not be, in the eyes of a child who was just entering the prime of her life?

In the in-between, Susie (Saoirse Ronan) rages at how the killer stole her life from her as much as she delights in the beauty of her heaven. She also pushes for her bones to be found as much as she relishes the her new discoveries. She feels jealous at her sister’s first love and still visits the boy that was supposed to be hers. Most of her time is spent watching her family and attempting to reveal to them her killer, a neighbor, George Harvey (played by a really creepy Stanley Tucci).

For some, like Ruth Connors (Carolyn Dando), an artistic girl who went to the same school as Susie but never really became her friend, she is a ghost, or a ghost-like memory, forever haunting her. For others, like Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie), she is the memory of a lost love or a love that never had a chance. For her family, she is a feeling that sometimes flits through them in their unguarded moments. One thing is sure though: as long as Susie holds on to her old life, and as much as her parents fight what is, nobody is moving forward to their versions of heaven, either in the now or in the afterlife.

Susie’s parents feel the strain in their relationship. The father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), ends up stalking some random suspects before zeroing in on Mr. Harvey, thanks to a photo Susie took that he has developed over a year later. The mother, Abigail (Rachel Weisz), finds it necessary to leave the family so she could make sense of her life away from a cruel reality. The children, like younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver), strive to find their own ways to soothe the family’s pain. And then there’s Grandma Lynn (played by a glowing Susan Sarandon) who douses it all with alchohol. As long as Susie is neither in hell nor in heaven, the family stays in limbo as well.

The beautiful thing—the lovely in the bones, if I may say so—is that their journey to healing, while painful, is also uplifting. I’m not sure if I’m remembering correctly, but when I read the book, I thought of the whole process from cadaver to shining skeletons that don’t hurt to look at anymore. It’s like that: a kid is raped and killed and too many years later, the family finds peace even without her body.

When Peter Jackson announced that he was making the movie version of the book in 2005, he said, you get “an experience when you read the book that is unlike any other. I don’t want the tone or the mood to be different or lost in the film.” In my opinion, he has been the most successful in his interpretations. I am sure glad it was him.

The Lovely Bones was one of the December casualties of the MMFF, so it has yet to be released locally. I would recommend everyone who has ever had a sob story to watch it, though, because it is packed with faith and hope without being being at all didactic and cheesy, and it makes you realize that whatever it is that died in you may eventually grow into lovely bones as well.

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