The Shipping News (2002, DVD)

Somewhere along the line, the people involved in producing The Shipping News became so concerned with making a prestigious picture that they stopped paying any attention to making a truly good picture. After going through half a dozen different directors and half a dozen different stars since the release of Annie Proulx's award winning book, Miramax finally handed the project over to the company good luck charm. And I don't mean Gwyneth Paltrow (though it's probably a minor miracle that she wasn't cast here somewhere). I'm referring to that master of the respectful middle-of-the-road award-worthy picture Lasse Hallstrom.

Hallstrom two most recent films had been Chocolat and The Cider House Rules. Both films received Best Picture Oscar Nominations and writing nominations and technical nominations and acting nominations and Hallstrom was nominated for Best Director for Cider House. And down the road, somebody is going to look at those films and wonder how they came to be so wildly overpraised. The basic answer is that with a little bit of Miramax marketing power, these two perfectly fine films were elevated to the role of awards royalty simply because they looked the part. Both films were based on quality literary property, shot on the finest locations by the finest technical filmmakers and with casts of the finest actors. And Hallstrom himself is a darned fine filmmaker. Look at some of what he did before he because Miramax's house director My Life As A Dog and What's Eating Gilbert Grape particularly.

The problem, for me at least, is that there isn't an intellectually challenging second in either of these two films. There isn't a second where the audience can choose how they want to interpret what's on screen. When you watch these movies, your every reaction is preordained by Hallstrom first, but by the Brothers Weinstein at Miramax first and foremost. They're pretty much like computer programs set in motion by a fine software designer. They'd play just the same whether you were there or not.

So The Shipping News must have seemed like a good bet. Oscar prognosticators were calling it the film to beat from six months before it was released. You had Hallstrom, a much-loved book, Robert Nelson Jacobs (Chocolat) adapting, Oliver Stapleton (Cider House) shooting, and film locations in Newfoundland already in place. And such a cast! Oscars seem to ooze (uncomfortably) from their pores. Five of them had been at least nominated for the industry highest honor Pete Postelwaithe (In The Name of the Father, Cate Blanchett, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, and Kevin Spacey. And so Miramax put all this together, scheduled a Christmas release and watched in inevitable disappointment as the film received no Oscar nominations, poor reviews, and middling box office.

And my point? The Shipping News is no worse a film than Hallstrom's two recently lauded films. Or at least not much worse. It still looks like the kind of film they give awards to and that critics rush out to praise and that audiences fall in love with. The film's most shocking downfall is just how wrong Kevin Spacey is in the lead role and just how surprising it is to see him give such a bad, lifeless performance. But it's also a surprisingly slight little drama. Every time something complicated is raised, it gets pushed aside for another metaphor about life. I've never seen a film where everything was a metaphor for nothing less than life itself. And for a film of less than two hours to try to tackle so much darned symbolism while also working in the stories of seven or eight supporting characters is just a fight you can't win.

The Cider House Rules was a fairly well regarded novel (not one of my Irving favorites, but whatever...) and even though the book got softened to mush by the adaptation it escaped criticism because the man doing the softening was John Irving himself. And Chocolat escaped because not as many people know the book it was based on, so fewer people had emotional investment in the material. But the people who love Annie Proulx's Shipping News really love it. And I've heard no end of complaining about how the film just cheapened the book and how Kevin Spacey wasn't anything like the Quoyle in the book.

But I haven't read the book, which is unusual for me. I'm a big ol' fan of reading the book before I see the movie, but this time I didn't. So I can't tell you if all the best parts of the book were left out. I can tell you that the rampant life metaphors in the film are the kind of thing that usually works better on the page. And I can't tell you if Kevin Spacey failed to capture the spirit of Quoyle. But I can say that this is the least interesting and most obvious performance of Spacey's career (and I'm including his small parts in films like Rocket Gibralter and Consenting Adults). And I can say that there are a lot of positives in The Shipping News, but not quite enough to get me to recommend it.

It's the story of Quoyle (Spacey). Son of a slightly abusive man who never figured he'd amount to much, Quoyle has lived down to dad's expectations. We see Quoyle's dad teaching him to swim by throwing him into the water. Quoyle's life is like one big drowning fantasy (and of course it's metaphorical). His life gets a brief hiccup of excitement from Petal (Blanchett) a free spirit who figures Quoyle for a soft touch, but also gives birth to his daughter Bunny (from what I can tell played by the Gainer triplets). Quoyle remains devoted to Petal despite her obvious infidelities and her general abuse. Quoyle returns from his parents' funerals with two urns of ashes in hand to find his Aunt Agnis (Dench) has appeared out of nowhere, but Petal and daughter have gone missing. Petal has been killed in an accident and Bunny has been returned after having been sold to a black market adoption ring.

Needing a new start, Agnis leads Quoyle and Bunny to the family's ancestoral home in Newfoundland. The literal home is a rundown place, lashed to the island with thick cords. They decided to rebuilt it (yep, it's metaphorical). Quoyle goes to the island newspaper The Gammy Bird hoping for a job as a print setter, but the paper's editor Jack Buggit (Scott Glenn), who'd rather be out wishing, hires him to report on car accidents (a bad idea considering what happened to Petal) and to do the shipping news, which I believe has something to do with ships going in and out of harbor. He befriends some members of the Gammy Bid staff, including stranded Brit Beaufield (Notting Hill's Rhys Ifans), but makes an enemy of the paper's idiosyncratic and power-hungry managing editor Tert Card (Postlethwaite). Quoyle is taught how to see the true story in everything (it's metaphorical) and to create the proper headlines for articles. He also meets the local school marm Wavey (Moore) and the two develop a friendship with potential. All the while Quoyle is learning secrets about his friends, family, and about himself.

The way the script is devised, Quoyle's life is basically one lesson after another. He begins as a lost man, pale and empty of soul. Presumably he's supposed to gradually develop some kind off appreciation for life as the film goes along, or else what's the point of all of the metaphorical lessons? Darned if I know. There are a lot of dark secrets an events in The Shipping News, but as depicted in the film, they all lack any weight. Tragedies in this movie happen only to educate Quoyle, whether they happened in the past or the present, whether they involve the people he loves, or random strangers. It's all about his enrichment. The only problem is that Spacey starts off bland and actually fades further into the background. In American Beauty he had to make a nearly identical transformation and he did it well. So what went wrong here? I have no idea. I just know that for the first time I can remember, Spacey is getting acted off the screen by each and every one of his co-stars. Basically, everybody in this movie feels authentic except for him. He feels like an Oscar winning actor trying something slightly different.

For example, the film offers at least a dozen totally different versions of the Newfoundland accent, from the strictly British to the slightly Scandinavian and I bought every one of them, but I didn't have a clue what accent Spacey thinks he's doing for around half of the film. Whatever it is, it flattens out his vocal intonations even further. That's a problem, since Spacey's flatness provides the wonderful irony that he gives to his best performances. Here? No irony. Just flat. So when Kevin Spacey is having scenes with Scott Glenn, only one part of the dialogue feels real. And the same thing is true in each and every character interaction. Since each character is supposed to help Quoyle grow, this is even more frustrating because the first lesson you wish he'd learn is an acting one. I'm still a huge Kevin Spacey fan, but every actor has their awful moments and here's one of his.

And everybody around him is, unfortunately, very fine, which only shows off his failings. Glenn is marvelous, elevating his character beyond just being a craggy old sea-man. Dench also elevates her character from feisty old broad to something more powerful. The film is populated by people whose faces have character and this especially includes Blanchett in a lively role which is out of the film too soon.

The settings are beautiful and perfectly photographed. The film seems largely shrouded in fog at all times, but that's the way it should be. The locations all feel right and there are a litany of great "movie" images, including the dragging of a whole house across an iced over ocean. As great as the moment is, it doesn't compare to a similar scene of domestic transplantation in Michael Winterbottom's The Claim. In fact, much of the visual style of this film called to mind Winterbottom's undernoticed effort, and the comparisons generally weren't favorable for Hallstrom. That's not a criticism of Hallstrom's work, incidentally, it's mostly me calling to mind a better (though hardly flawless) movie.

The Shipping News is limited by its episodic style and the fact that every step of the way is predictable. You know all of the events that it's building to way in advance. The portentous dialogue tips you off to what's coming and you can just sit back and relax and wait without any kind of dramatic suspense. You know a storm will come to the island. You knows Quoyle will have to deal with his drowning anxiety. And you probably have a pretty good idea of what's coming with their old home. But for all of their obviousness, Hallstrom mounts all of the crucial scenes excellently. They all look and feel right.

But nothing can make The Shipping News feel whole. It feels like the pieces of a great movie, but none of the spirit, joy, or challenge of truly great filmmaking. It's the film that was made king before anybody bothered to see if it was entitled to the throne and then, when its merit was found lacking it was cast away like some many royal imposters. It's not bad enough to cast off without a look, but it's hardly a must-see.