Nevertheless, sounds and smells notwithstanding, I enjoyed The Shipping News. I never managed to make it through the novel; I've never managed to make it through anything Annie Proulx has written. The woman sitting next to me (on the other side of me from Stinky Seal Woman) told me that, from what she'd heard, people who had read the book seemed to dislike the movie, but people who hadn't read the book enjoyed the film. For what that's worth.
The outstanding reason to see the movie is the stellar cast: Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Scott Glenn, Pete Postlethwaite, Rhys Ifans. But it's also less sappy than Lasse Hallström's later films have tended to be (Chocolat, The Cider House Rules), and the fairly grim story is leavened with plenty of humor.
Spacey plays Quoyle, a meek, self-effacing man who doesn't seem to think he deserves anything out of life. When he meets Petal (Blanchett), a trashy, wild woman with frosted-pink lipstick and torn fishnet stockings, he's blown away. But marriage and childbirth do nothing to calm Petal down; she makes "You're boring" sound like a devastating curse. She storms out of Quoyle's life at the exact time that his parents kill themselves. Left alone with Bunny, his daughter, Quoyle takes up with his aunt Agnis (Dench), and they move up to the family's ancestral home in Newfoundland, a broken-down house tied down with cables that moan in the storms. There, Quoyle finds a job at the Gammy Bird newspaper (owned by Glenn but run by Postlethwaite's petty tyrant Tert), covering car wrecks and finding human interest stories in the comings and goings of boats for his "Shipping News" column (one of the funniest scenes is his interview of a soused couple on "Hitler's boat"). As he settles into the town and wins small victories, his confidence gradually improves (as does his hairpiece). But there are family secrets lurking....
The movie gets a little too into the "crusty, picturesque small-town people" stereotype, with their grim glee at dropping veiled hints of scandals. In a way, it's almost as formulaic as The Cider House Rules was -- you can probably figure out most of the deep, dark secrets on your own. But it's got a gray, bleak look to it that keeps the sentiment from congealing, and Hallström cleverly uses water as a unifying theme throughout the story. And the scenery is stunning, with a stark ferocity that puts the human doings in perspective. The land itself is almost a character, as are the ocean and even the spooky old Quoyle house that has to be tied down.
Spacey and Dench, with the two major roles, are terrific and work very well together. Spacey's role is, for once, almost completely unironic, but it never comes off as simple. Dench is playing her crusty-old-lady-with-a-heart-of-gold, but with less transparent sentiment than she did in Chocolat. In their smaller roles, Postlethwaite, Glenn, and Ifans (as a dissolute adventurer stranded in Newfoundland) are very entertaining. Blanchett is the biggest surprise, playing very effectively against type as the white-trash Petal. Julianne Moore's Newfie accent slips in and out, but when she's got it, she's pretty decent. I liked her when she first appeared on the scene several years ago, but lately she's annoyed me more and more. She doesn't really have much of a range, and here she's her same quiet, motherly persona, but at least it's fairly applicable this time. Even the child actors are good, rarely slipping into preciousness or cutesy precocity.
I got to see this at the MPAA screening room because it was a daytime screening. I just walked out of the office at 10 a.m., muttering something about a meeting. To quote Office Space, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care. It's not like I was missed; all anyone was doing was preparing for our holiday party. I got back too late for the hors d'oeuvres (or, as our secretary memorably spelled it once, "hors ovaries"). I wasn't too broken up about that, assuming that it meant I'd miss my boss presenting his cheese and crackers as though they were rare and exotic delicacies, and no doubt expounding at great length -- incorrectly, as always -- on the origins of whatever cheese he happened to bring, no doubt throwing in some of his execrable fake accents (I hope it wasn't German cheese, because then my coworkers would have had to listen to him pontificating on the history of cheese in southern Bavaria sounding like Colonel Klink).
Anyway, my barrage of reviews is nearly at an end. Just
one more,
and then I'm on vacation for a week. I actually skipped another
free
movie last night because I was still cranky about the rude and
infuriating
people at The Business of Strangers,
and then my boss put me in an even worse mood during the day (this
time,
it was his exasperating habit of adding a comment to everything anyone
says, including confirming everything our managing director says, as
though
he
were the one with 20 years of government affairs experience instead of
her, or as if anyone cared if he approved of what she said.
I asked a coworker through gritted teeth, "What is his compulsion to
make
a comment after everything everyone says?", and she
replied
with a shrug, "Why do you wipe your ass after you shit?", which didn't
really make much sense but was pretty funny).
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