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“Um Olhar do Paraíso” (The Lovely Bones) é o tipo de filme que dificilmente não chamará a sua atenção. Digo isso porque o longa é uma grande mistura de gêneros. Um drama que ora parece um thriler, ora um romance poético. Conta a história de Susie Q, uma adolescente sonhadora (maior entre três irmãos) que vive com os pais num pacato bairro familiar. Certo dia, em uma rotineira volta da escola, é brutalmente assassinada por seu vizinho, e seu corpo desaparece. Na Terra, começa a eterna busca de seu pai por pistas de seu desaparecimento. Enquanto isso, Susie se vê presa no “limbo”, entre o céu e a terra, tentando se desprender de sua vida na terra para seguir em frente, no curso natural da vida. Antes de dar o próximo passo, Susie precisa aceitar (e entender) o que aconteceu, deixando para trás seus medos e angústias.

Responsável por uma das mais fiéis e bem sucedidas adaptações cinematográficas (a trilogia O Senhor dos Anéis), Peter Jackson desta vez deixa as mega-produções um pouco de lado, e constrói uma fantasia com tom mais intimista, mas não menos grandioso. O grande acerto do roteiro é não se apoiar em nenhuma crença/religião, e criar o “paraíso” de Susie como um lugar surreal, de tão bonito que se apresenta. Com uma paleta de cores bem variada, o céu de Susie é muito mais colorido do que os anos 70 em que vivia. Além da grande intensidade das cores, o lugar é uma mistura de diversas paisagens, climas e sensações. A fotografia e a direção de arte do longa são espetaculares.

Na parte do thriler, nada de novo. Tudo o que sempre vemos nos filmes do gênero está lá. A família problemática, o vizinho solitário, o assassino frio com seus gestos caricatos, a busca por pistas, a perseguição… Na parte do romance, a adolescente em busca do primeiro amor, que recebe conselhos da avó louca e alcoólatra, enquanto seus pais parecem mais preocupados com o próprio relacionamento. Quando o amor impossível é correspondido, sua vida é tirada antes da chance de um único beijo. Lá de “cima”, Susie acompanha a vida dos mais próximos, e consegue mandar pequenos sinais para aqueles dispostos à enxergar.

Ao término da sessão, não consegui me decidir se a mistura de gêneros era boa ou ruim. Pode ser o ponto fraco do filme, porque Jackson não se aprofunda nem aqui nem ali, e acaba fazendo um filme quase superficial. Mas ao mesmo tempo, pode ser um acerto, já que assim não correu o risco de apostar todas as fichas e se dar mal. No final das contas, o longa torna-se uma experiência agradável, tocante, que não exige muito do espectador, mas o deixa pensativo, seja ele católico, espírita, judeu, ou até mesmo ateu.

É a eterna discussão da vida após a morte, que nunca terá fim, pois nunca saberemos exatamente o que acontece quando nosso coração para de bater. Seria muito confortante saber que o próximo passo da jornada fosse o paraíso para onde Susie vai. Mas, por outro lado, será que viveríamos a vida com tanta intensidade, se soubéssemos que depois tem algo ainda melhor? Talvez esta incerteza seja o nosso grande motivador.

Legendary New Zealand director Peter Jackson (“The Lord of the Rings” & “King Kong”) follows his work on Middle Earth by turning his attention to, that other great mythical realm, heaven in this adaptation of the best-selling 2002 novel of the same name by Alice Sebold, which has received Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations.

14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is dispatched to a fairy-tale land by kindly neighbour George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), where she watches her parents Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and Abigail Salmon (Rachel Weisz), younger sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) and sometime love interest Ray Singh (Reece Ritchie) coming to terms with their loss in this curious period piece.

Critics Choice Award-winning starlet Saoirse Ronan (“Atonement” & “City of Ember”) puts in a powerful central performance with strong support from an intense Mark Wahlberg, a winsome Rachel Weisz, a comic Susan Sarandon and a truly twisted turn from Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated character actor Stanley Tucci.

The film-makers have doubtless achieved their admittedly somewhat limited aim of creating an “ethereal and emotional but not hokey” vision of the afterlife but the cute CGI masks a somewhat soulless story that leaves a talented cast with little to chew on and makes the whole child-murder milieu seem all a little too fun and facebookey.

“I wasn’t lost, or frozen, or gone… I was alive; I was alive in my own perfect world.”

Granted, The Lovely Bones is a Film with many flaws, as so many Films are. I can see what all the fuss is over the movie with the absence of attention to detail. For instance, in one scene, the Father, who, unfortunately, was played by Mark Whalberg, asks where Suzie is and the Sister replies and tells him she is at Film Club, later wondering when she will get back from the mall- where was she; the mall or Film Club? I was also very disappointed in the lack of Character development. The only Character that was expressed thoroughly, and acted brilliantly, I might add, was Susan Sarandon’s Character- the clueless Grandmother who puts a fun spin on the story. Don’t get me wrong, I loved her Character, but she was completely unnecessary in the movie. As I said, the Film is flawed and there’s plenty of room for improvement, but I think some folks are taking the blow a little too hard, and a little too personally. When it comes down to it, The Lovely Bones was damn entertaining, and actually sent several chills down my spine, whether it was out of suspense or the emotional ending. And, surprisingly, even to myself, I found myself loving the “in between” Suzie was in; as corny as it may be, I really liked the timing of sequences and events happening simultaneously in both the in between and real life. I haven’t read the book, and I can’t, for myself, say that it did justice to the novel, but I did hear a Girl afterwards telling her Family that she didn’t think the Film could have been made much better, considering the complexity of the Novel. I’m glad I spent the money, and I’m glad I’ve started off the new year with The Lovely Bones.

Entah mengapa, film The Lovely Bones mengingatkan saya pada Heavenly Creatures, film asal Selandia Baru yang disutradarai oleh Peter Jackson dan menjadi debut akting bagi aktris favorit saya, Kate Winslet, yang ketika itu masih berusia 16 tahun. Mungkin karena selain tema yang sedikit mirip, The Lovely Bones juga menampilkan penampilan apik dari Saoirse Ronan, aktris muda yang melejit lewat film drama period, Atonement.

Anyway, The Lovely Bones sendiri merupakan sebuah film yang diadaptasi dari sebuah novel berjudul sama karya Alice Sebold. Naskah film ini sendiri dikerjakan oleh Jackson bersama Fran Walsh dan Phillippa Boyens, tim yang sama yang mengadaptasi trilogi The Lord of the Rings, yang sukses membawa nama Jackson ke deretan sutradara papan atas dunia.

Bercerita mengenai Susie Salmon (Ronan), seorang gadis muda dari sebuah bahagia yang menemukan dirinya kini adalah sesosok arwah setelah ia diperkosa dan dibunuh oleh tetangganya sendiri, George Harvey (Tucci). Film ini menggambarkan bagaimana Susie melihat keadaan keluarganya yang secara perlahan hancur sepeninggal dirinya, menyibak rahasia kelam dari sang tetangga pembunuh, hingga usaha Susie untuk melepaskan masa lalunya dan berjalan ke sebuah dunia baru, tempat dimana ia seharusnya berada kini.

Bagi para pembaca novel karya Sebold, termasuk saya, tentu sangat sulit untuk membayangkan bagaimana film ini akan berhasil dibuat dengan penggambaran yang tepat akan alam dimana para arwah berkumpul setelah kematian mereka. Namun, bagi seseorang yang sebelumnya sukses menggambarkan bagaimana Middle-Earth secara visual, tentu tidak akan sesulit itu bagi Jackson untuk menggambarkan bagaimana keadaan dunia sebelum menuju surga tersebut.

Dan hal tersebut berhasil! Dengan menggunakan efek visual yang cerdas, serta dibantu oleh cinematografi arahan Andrew Lesnie, Jackson mampu menggambarkan sebuah dunia yang sangat indah, sekaligus menggambarkannya sebagai sebuah tempat yang sangat sepi, misterius dan kadang mencekam. Kehebatan efek visual yang ditawarkan Jackson semakin terlihat pada sebuah scene dimana suasana dunia tersebut berubah-ubah demikian cepat. Sebuah tampilan yang indah sekaligus menakjubkan.

Dari sisi akting, tidak ada akting yang lebih menonjol di film ini daripada penampilan sang aktris utama, Saoirse Ronan, serta pemeran pembunuh Susie, Stanley Tucci. Ronan, gadis muda berusia 15 tahun asal Irlandia ini, mampu membuktikan progresivitas aktingnya dengan tampil sangat memukau. Ronan, dapat dengan mudah menampilkan kesedihan serta kesendirian yang dirasakan sang karakter, Susie Salmon, dan memberikan rasa keterikatan tersendiri bagi penontonnya dalam mengikuti kisahnya.

Lain halnya dengan Stanley Tucci. Penampilan Tucci sebagai George Harvey adalah penampilan yang sangat berbeda dari peran-peran yang ia pernah perankan sebelumnya. Lupakan sorotan mata yang hangat dan penuh komedi seperti yang pernah Anda saksikan dari perannya di The Devil Wears Prada dan Julie & Julia. Tucci di The Lovely Bones adalah sesosok pria yang dingin, misterius dan menakutkan. Dia adalah tipe tetangga Anda yang Anda kenal baik namun menyimpan begitu banyak sejarah hitam dalam hidupnya, sehingga ada baiknya Anda menjauhi dirinya.

Untuk para pemeran lainnya, seperti Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz dan Susan Sarandon, walaupun porsi peran mereka di film ini terasa kurang kuat, namun tetap mampu mendukung kualitas jalan cerita yang ada.

Keunggulan lainnya dari The Lovely Bones adalah music score arahan Brian Eno yang mengisi tiap adegan di film ini dengan begitu sesuai. Score arahan Eno berhasil membuat para penontonnya terbuai dengan setiap scene indah sekaligus terasa mencekam dan mendebarkan di adegan lainnya.

Sejujurnya, adalah sangat menyenangkan untuk melihat The Lovely Bones, sebuah film yang bagi saya pribadi mempunyai sebuah chemistry yang kuat antara film dan penontonnya. Jalan cerita yang kuat dan menghantui dipadupadankan dengan akting yang kuat para pemerannya dan berbagai tampilan visual yang dapat memuaskan mata, akan membuat The Lovely Bones berada di pemikiran para penontonnya berhari-hari setelah mereka selesai menyaksikannya. Another victory for Mr Jackson.

Rating: 4.5 / 5

So, spoilers, and if you want to see the film before hearing from someone who hated it, ignore this:

The issue with TLB is unintentional emotional disconnectedness in almost every scene from almost every character. It’s long but it feels edited to hell, and there is only one scene that is truly effective in the entire thing.

Almost nothing works. No scene is given time to breathe, no character feels real, and at times the score is so bad I began to get angry.

The effects are so-so and completely unnecessary. It’s unfortunate that the man lauded with using special effects to HELP tell the story so well in LOTR uses them as nothing but special effects in this film. They don’t do anything for the story. They’re not even that impressive (except for one effect involving a “sea” of wheat).

And they made a terrible mistake in not showing the murder. It should have been an unflinching R instead of an ambiguous PG-13. Let the camera settle down, for God’s sake. Hell, let it sit still. Let a scene play.

And please, PLEASE stop giving Marky Mark speaking roles, or at least stop putting ridiculous wigs on him. Rachel Weiz is forgettable and I’m not sure what Susan Sarandon is in the movie for—her character is just as meaningless as the rest.

I could go on, but who cares?

I’ll be upfront—I cannot be objective in reviewing Peter Jackson’s adaptation of Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones. It’s impossible because I read the story a couple weeks ago to prepare myself for the film. With complete candor, I didn’t love the novel; I thought the first three-quarters were brilliant while the final act took some unnecessary turns and rushed to a conclusion that seemed tacked on in parts. Above all, it was very well written, expressing the pain and sorrow of loss and showing how people around a murder—whether family, friends, or strangers—react to an inhumane tragedy. Throw that all out the window if you ever decide to sit down and see this movie because that’s what the filmmakers did. My first reaction after the end credits appeared onscreen was that an illiterate child took the Cliff Notes, ripped the pages out, jumbled them back together, and sent it out to Hollywood. The only thing this film is good for is in making me appreciate and enjoy the original source material more. Sometimes you don’t know how good something is until you see it get ruined.

I’m being harsh, I know this, but I can’t help it. In all honesty, Jackson and company might have crafted a wonderful tale of murder and karmic retribution; the problem is that the novel was none of those things. Sure, Susie Salmon follows her murderer from her own personal heaven to see what he does, but the thought of revenge is inconsequential. The novel spans close to a decade of time, showing the evolution of so many people, the good decisions they make and the bad. The film distills it all down to a period of, what? Two years? Four years? I’m not really sure because the Salmon family has twenty-four cartridges of film to develop, meaning that final one is two years after the murder, but a news clipping of sister Lindsey reads how she was Valedictorian of her class. Well, if we do the math, Susie was a Freshman at the time of her death, meaning Lindsey was at most an eighth grader. So, four or five years must have passed, and if so, why is she still on the high school soccer team, running around the neighborhood? The course of time has been compressed so recklessly that plotholes like this exist—possibly not noticed unless you have a clear idea of the book’s timeline—not to mention a complete disregard for character development or the chance to earn some necessary redemption.

The Lovely Bones is gorgeous to look at, though; one cannot deny that fact. The 70s era aesthetic is precise and the imaginative mixture of heaven and earth is handled as only a creative visionary like Jackson can. Some scenes are powerful in their emotive range, suspenseful in their chaotic tension, and always a visual treat. The computer graphics by no mean go overboard, they are rich and luscious in their orchestration, giving a sense of wonder making it hard for Susie to keep grounded in the real world, unable to let go quite yet, when a magical world in front of her. Watching Mark Wahlberg, as father Jack, get beat up in the cornfield—dark and sharply cut, flashlight beam rapidly strewn about, illuminating the creepy visage of murderous George Harvey relishing the violence—is absolutely cinematic storytelling at its finest. With an economy of detail, Jackson shows us and lets us hear only what he wants. I have to wonder, though, whether some details only seemed effective because I had read the novel and saw the visual representation of things the film doesn’t blatantly explain itself. This success in art direction only makes the butchering of tone and story from the book that much more criminal though.

The following may fall into spoiler territory, so I apologize and warn you in advance. To start, Susie, played with a starkly delineated range of either pure joy or heart-wrenching pain by Saoirse Ronan—the screenwriters fault, not hers, as they don’t let her have enough time to fully evolve—does not get raped by Mr. Harvey. She is killed, plain and simple, (shown metaphorically by her ghost running away for help, a really stunning sequence that gave me shivers), her body put into a safe, but not tossed in the sinkhole until much, much later. Events are combined, such as Ruth’s family owning the farm that houses the pit or Rachel Weisz’s Abigail’s return home occurring after her husband’s beat down rather than a heart attack years later, and others are completely absent, like the affair that’s so crucial to the story, the existence of Samuel Heckler—making the end glimpse of a pregnant Lindsey idiotically obtuse—his brother Hal, the Mrs. Singh, and even Buckley. That last exclusion is understandable, I guess, since he is still only maybe ten at the end of the film. Other things are shown so blatantly that any nuance from the novel is gone—it has become a chase to find a killer, a suspense film that will sell tickets, looking the away from the real tale of depression, grief, love, and understanding Sebold created.

The novel was so emotionally raw because it had the patience to allow each character their differing ways to cope. In the film, however, we see Jack’s fall into despair and denial, his life consumed by finding Susie’s killer, become simply a rage-infused rampage, ending in injury, without the time to grow afterwards; Abigail’s abandonment is more of a journey of solitude than disgraceful disappearance for her inability to be a mother when she never really wanted to be one in the first place, ashamed by her total disregard to the bonds of her marriage; Buckley’s influence on his father is thrown out the window, his role literally just there to cryptically speak of the ‘in-between’ as though this is a horror film; and Lindsey is stripped of any and all uniqueness, relegated to being the heroine in discovering the murderer’s true identity and not a person herself. There is also Ruth Connors, who is so very critical to everything in the book, displayed as nothing more than a goth chick touched by a ghost, paving the way towards a brief possession from the beyond. Even Harvey’s demise—more a whimper that anything else, keeping with the realization that the story isn’t about his comeuppance—is alluded to by a heavy-handed visual precursor halfway through the film. Everything was dumbed-down to grade school level, utterly destroying the true meaning of this harrowing tale.

If I can give any credit, it would be to Stanley Tucci. He knows his motivations and he nails the character. With a vocal pattern change and laugh that fits the sociopath he is, Harvey is truly the only role that lives up to its literary counterpart. Even though the part is warped into being a strict villain, antagonizing at every turn rather than just another person living life while Susie looks down, the mannerisms and demeanor stay the same. Susan Sarandon is also pitch-perfect casting, but unlike Tucci, who becomes the second main character, her Grandma Lynn is almost non-existent, leaving all her eccentricities off-screen. No matter how good the acting is, no one can excel beyond the fact their roles have become two-dimensional cutouts of the fully-fleshed human souls in the novel. I’d really love to hear what Sebold has to say about this film and whether it makes her feel as though she was taken advantage of; seeing an epic of the heart be relegated to an ‘eye for an eye’ type search for retribution. I’m always the first to give a director credit when he or she takes a book and makes it into a film, creating between the lines and allowing for the medium to decide where the story must go instead of being as faithful as possible. Unfortunately, it is one thing to keep the core intact while the process to show it alters, but a complete other to replace all that was important by the secondary plot; bringing the chase to the front and pushing the characterizations so far back that you’ll blink once and miss it all.

The Lovely Bones 4/10

http://jaredmobarakreviews.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/lovely-bones/