The Lovely Bones

Starring Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Mark Wahlberg. Directed by Peter Jackson. M.

REVIEWED BY DAVID MANNING

Last updated 11:23 31/12/2009

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Competing storylines in Peter Jackson's adaptation of a tricky best-selling novel unfortunately result in a fractured film drama that fails to coalesce into an effective whole.

While retaining key elements of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel, the screenplay by Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens understandably streamlines the story but also splinters it into three main narrative threads.

One focuses on the narrator, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), murdered in 1973 at age 14 and afterwards in a place "in-between" her life and heaven; another is the portrayal of how Susie's family react to her unsolved death; and lastly there's the story of the search for Susie's killer, a neighbour named George Harvey (Stanley Tucci).

Most of the film's interest and drama is in her family coping with loss and grief, coupled by the growing suspicion of Susie's father Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and sister Lindsey (Rose McIver) in Harvey.

But almost intruding into these potentially engaging and compelling storylines is the film's daring visualisation of Susie in her afterlife as she watches those who were important in her life.

The film's opening image is of a penguin trapped in the perfect world of a glass snow globe, which is what Susie is, in effect, is in her afterlife transitional place.

If ever a film-maker were to tackle creating such a place and integrating its depiction into an overall story, it would be hard to think of someone better than Jackson, who admirably blended real and dream worlds in Heavenly Creatures.

Weta Digital – the Kiwi special effects company behind such films as The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar – presents a wonderfully conceived, spectacularly surreal and strikingly imaginative conjuring of Susie's afterlife domain, one which is praiseworthy in itself (giant boat-in-bottles smashing on a rocky shore is one highlight) but whose flights of fancy prove to be counter-productive in the film overall.

Instead of Susie driving the narrative, the frequent trips into her psychedelic spiritual space are interruptions which fragment and dilute the other storylines, ultimately detaching movie goers.

Consequently, any likely emotional resonance and any story tension are dissipated, if not lost – although Harvey luring Susie to her death is certainly sinister and there is one suspenseful scene in which Lindsey goes snooping in Harvey's house. The characters do not connect with movie goers the way they should, though through no fault of the cast.

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Indeed, the two characters who dominate the film are murderer and victim.

While you are obviously sorry about what has happened to Susie, the portrayal of her in her afterlife doesn't translate sympathy into empathy.

Meanwhile, Tucci, in toupee, glasses, moustache and false teeth, struggles to be more than a one-dimensional creepy, introverted predator hiding in the guise of bland normalcy, without the book's fleshing out of his character.

Wahlberg does well with what scenes he has as a father preoccupied with finding out what happened to his beloved daughter, but Rachel Weisz only has snippets to work with as a mother who finds it increasingly difficult to contend with Susie's death and her husband's obsession.

Susan Sarandon and Michael Imperioli have even less opportunity to impress, with Sarandon as Susie's brassy, hard-drinking, smoking, tell-it-like-it-is grandmother, who seems an overblown, discordant force, while Imperioli is reduced to a few walk-on scenes as the police detective in charge of Susie's case.

Jackson, however, shows a commendable balance in portraying Susie's murder, with enough mounting menace and dread to unnerve but with restraint in how far that depiction goes (there's no mention of rape in the movie, nor is a remnant of Susie's elbow found with her cap in the film).

In a movie about letting go and holding on, one cannot help but think that if Jackson and his co-writers had chosen to only make Susie a voice-over narrator, rather than an opportunity to flaunt the prowess of Weta Digital, then his film version of the novel might have been much more successful.

The title stems from a line said by Susie at the end of the film (and novel) about how "the lovely bones" were "connections" that happened after she was gone.

What's impaired in this treatment of the book are those connections – both within the movie and with the film and its audience.