The Lovely Bones (2009)
A review of The Lovely Bones (2009), directed by Peter Jackson.
This is not the first time I’ve encountered The Lovely Bones. I had seen the movie before, sometime in my childhood, and I had read the book when I was ten years old. As someone who was younger than the main character, Susie, at the time of encountering this story originally, I was, of course, horrified.
My mother is also a crime junkie and is obsessed with dangerous things (she is full on afraid of the city we live in, it’s a problem) and believes that even getting on, say, the Washington D.C. metro will get you stabbed because once someone was stabbed. My point is that having a mother like this only amplified the fear I felt after reading the novel version of this book.
Now, years later as an adult, I have revisited the film, and find myself naturally comparing it to my memories of the book and now my experience of being a woman in a male-centric world. This brings a new perspective on how I’m watching this film. While I can’t relate to the 1970s setting of the film, I can comment on the story, although I cannot relate at times.
Ironically, I scheduled this post way before the current Alice Sebold scandal, where the guy she accused of raping her was actually found to have not raped her, which makes this a timely post. Onwards with the review!
Content
Our main character of this film is Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan when she was only fourteen years old. Even when she is a young girl (we can also see the extent of this in the film Atonement too, when she was even younger than this!) she is a magnificent actor, truly owning up to her characters and making them come alive.
Susie seems to be living a normal life for a girl her age in the seventies: her family has bought her a film camera, which she uses up all the film immediately for, and she has a crush on a British boy at her school who seems to write poems and likes Shakespeare (precursor to Lady Bird and Ronan’s character falling for Timothee Chalamet’s character, am I right?).
But one day while walking home, everything seems to go wrong. Her creepy neighbor, Mr. Harvey (played by Stanley Tucci), meets her in the cornfield and invites her to come down into a lair he built for children. Reluctant, Susie agrees, and they go underground.
Here, Harvey rapes and kills Susie. In the film, the rape is merely implied vaguely, but in the book it is explicitly mentioned about how she has been raped. Running from the scene, Susie passes her classmate, who can see her, but soon discovers she is actually dead.
This film’s plot is sparked by the murder of Susie. Her murder isn’t actually the focus; it’s the spark that shows us the true story. It’s a story about grief, learning to move on, and justice. Mr. Harvey walks free, the detectives not suspecting him because there’s no evidence against him.
Susie’s father is grief-stricken, constantly suspcious of everyone in town, and just wants to find his daughter’s murderer. Her mother can’t handle the situation and leaves the family for California, which is honestly pretty shitty. Then comes in the grandmother, who honestly is my favorite character.
The grandmother does not give a shit, which kind of explained my vibe while watching this film. She’s got her classic 1940s fur coat, has pristine eyeliner, and is drinking constantly while popping pills. She also is very wrong with what she says: she says Susie is going to live a long life because she rescued her brother from choking on a twig. I enjoyed this unbothered energy, although it seems like a façade for her own grief.
This isn’t a lighthearted film at all, you have been warned. But it shows you the beauty that grows with grief, and how the world will continue onwards with beauty even after you are just bones.
Overall Thoughts
This is an interesting film to watch, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for a casual watch. There’s some really bad and corny CGI that really dates the movie for the era that it was filmed in, while it is explicitly set in the 1970s. I do like some switches from the novel.
SPOILER: Susie possesses Ruth’s body at the end of the film and book. In the film she innocently kisses Ray’s lips while in Ruth’s body, but in the novel she actually has sex with him while possessing another’s body. That. makes me extremely uncomfortable, because did Ruth consent to that? Besides that, it can be a sad movie that’s about a family learning to move on from their daughter’s shocking murder and the impacts it has on the people around the victim.
