It has been ten years since Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman and Kaufman’s mythical brother Donald created the quintessential film about the perils of adaptation. In their acerbic tale of a screenwriter dwarfed by the enormity of the task before him, Adaptation’s complex and clever plot encapsulated like no other, the means by which outstanding books can turn into lousy screenplays.
The film demonstrated that the pitfalls of adaptation are many and varied. Adhere to the source text too slavishly, or rely too heavily on voice over, and you’ll end up with little more than the live-action equivalent of a book on tape. Yet take too many liberties with the defining elements of the novel, or fail to articulate the writer’s prose, and you’ll have to answer to more than just the howls of protest from the sniping 'the book was better’ crowd...
Of this Peter Jackson would have been well aware, when he signed on to adapt and direct The Lovely Bones.
Alice Sebold’s genre-defying tome is narrated by a teenage murder victim, Susie Salmon, as she watches over her fractured family and keeps tabs on her killer, from an ethereal pergola. As a best-selling story of loss, renewal and the minutiae of life, its big screen adaptation was inevitable, and so it came as no surprise that Jackson put his hand up to do the honours. For starters, he and his cohorts (Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens) are no strangers to adaptation – prior to their Oscar-winning Tolkein adaptation, he and Walsh were nominated for reinventing Pauline Parker’s diaries as the Heavenly Creatures screenplay. Secondly, The Lovely Bones is an otherworldly tale, and Peter Jackson has otherworldliness for breakfast. He thrives on alternate realities, and with a personal army of in-house effects wizards, his breakthrough films were lavish renditions, kept grounded by clever story and well-realised character; think how spectacularly the murderous teens of his Heavenly Creatures conspired against the world from their private universe; remember how convincing Michael J Fox was, as a conduit between this world and the next, in the kooky and spooky The Frighteners?
In short, it seemed that all of the elements were in place for the perfect pairing of source text and storyteller.
From the outset Jackson has said that his interpretation of The Lovely Bones won’t please everyone, especially not die-hard fans of the book. Fair enough, but after emerging (gratefully) from the exhaustive 135-minute film, one wonders exactly who the director thought would appreciate such an overwrought slice of conventionality.
Inexplicably, Jackson, Walsh and Boyens have opted to reduce a complex narrative about intimacy, family, and grief, into a redundant crime and punishment thriller... and worse, tart it up with gaudy supernatural visuals.
Jackson & Co. seem fixated by the prospect of Susie’s killer getting his comeuppance, at the expense of all other elements of the story. Jack Salmon (Mark Wahlberg) is a number cruncher by day, and he hoists miniature ships in bottles by night with his beloved daughter, 14 year-old Susie (Saorise Ronan). He defends his painstaking pursuit, suggesting that 'hobbies are healthy; they teach you things" – the inference being of course, that his meticulous nature will pay dividends later, in the hunt for Susie’s killer (Stanley Tucci). Pity then, it takes him two years to join the dots, in the first of many dubious U-turns in the adaptation.
Jackson belabours the point that Stanley Tucci’s blonde, bland Mr Harvey embodies that malevolent 'ordinariness’ that makes serial killers so elusive. The dowdy everyman seems harmless enough, so it is that young Susie agrees to accompany him to see his newly installed underground playroom, and she doesn’t get 'the skeevies" until it’s too late to escape. Jackson spares us the grislier details of Susie’s rape and murder and concentrates his earthly narrative on setting the trap for Harvey. This focus means other developing story strands lead nowhere, almost as if they’ve been tossed into the pervasive sinkhole that conceals Harvey’s secrets, and a good many of the small town’s disused white goods.
In roles that were probably much bigger in an earlier cut of the film, Rachel Weisz and Susan Sarandon play Susie’s mother and grandmother respectively. After developing the characters in early scenes, Jackson reduces their story arcs to simple montage (kids hear shouting, Weisz disappears in an early morning taxi...). He gives Sarandon the shortest shrift – the comic relief music montage – when her booze-sodden grandma blows in to move the family forward and adjust to life after Susie.
Whatever Jackson’s issues with the earth-bound, they pale in comparison to what does with Susie’s world. His representation of her ascent to her 'in-between" place is awash with leaden metaphors and show-offy visuals.
Unshackled by earthly restraints, Jackson shifts his Weta toolsets into overdrive in a more-is-more free-for-all frenzy. Susie’s Heaven a not fluffy clouds and men in flowing robes, it’s mountains, seascapes, fields of flowers, icy ravines, isolated beaches, disco parties and CGI shipwrecks... it’s four seasons in one minute, and back again. It's fitting for an excitable girl in the first blush of love, but Jackson keeps the attention on the visual excesses, and denies us the chance to connect with Susie. Ronan is luminous as the 14 year-old soul but Jackson just doesn’t give her much to work with. Once she crosses over, she’s all flowing locks and wide-eyed wonder, offering up a broad range of reaction shots to her director’s parade of technical gee-whizzardry.
The Lovely Bones is a wasted opportunity, which shows up the limitations of its director. His third foray into the realm of heavenly creatures is a backwards step.
