Critics reviews

In the hands of writer-director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines), M.L. Stedman's engrossing 2013 Thomas Hardy–inspired novel about a World War I veteran who becomes a lightkeeper on Janus Rock, 100 miles off the western coast of Australia, has been transformed into little more than a pious tearjerker.

The lead actors all weep convincingly, yet Fassbender and Vikander seem too awkward together to have been living side by side for years. At the climax the wife makes a decision antithetical to her character, and a morally complex film derails into hackneyed Nicholas Sparks territory, complete with a tacked-on epilogue to tie up all the loose ends.

There's nothing assaultive or aggressively experimental about the film, but in its construction, Cianfrance has taken great care to keep it from being snoozy awards-bait. If the movie exacts a few tears from you, don't be embarrassed: It works for those tears honestly, and the two actresses who anchor the picture, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz, give nuanced and deeply sympathetic performances.

Picturesque gloom overwhelms illumination in The Light Between Oceans, a ferociously acted but increasingly overwrought period melodrama directed by Derek Cianfrance... Cianfrance tends to be drawn to emotional extremes, but Stedman's book arguably provides him with too much raw material—or, rather, with material that's just too raw.

The Light Between Oceans has what you might call a Very Big Ask at its core – a decision made by its central characters which is so unlikely, so difficult to comprehend, and so undermining of their moral underpinning as "good" people, that it's a make or break deal. Every detail in the film fills in as either the context for or repercussions of this specific moment.

There's something compelling, even... in the director's ambition to stretch stories across decades, examining the ways they change people in even the least consequential of ways. And the preceding two hours of The Light Between Oceans achieve a beautifully sustained study in adult themes of emotional crisis, and the responsibilities parents take on in their roles of caring for children. The film as a whole both fits snugly into and subtly mature this quietly fascinating director's filmography.