The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” got terrible reviews since it was released, and that’s why I didn’t see it in theaters and waited until it was available on DVD, although I had bought the audio book and listened to it and was very enthralled by the brutal story of the 14 year-old girl raped and killed by a pedophile and then watching the life of her loved ones (and hated one) through the years that followed. The brutality of the story, told from a young girl’s point of view, who still has her innocence and dreams, is very original and heartbreaking.

I can see why the movie got back reviews. Frankly I would have given it a “C” as well if I was a critic. I think Peter Jackson paid too much attention on the computer graphics and how beautiful the shots looked, that he forgot how to tell the story. The pacing of the movie was very strange, way too slow most of the time. Too much time was spent on slow shots that had way too much sentiment, and it felt like watching a Chinese soap opera most of the time. In fact, I had to fast forward through many scenes because they were excruciatingly slow.

So what would have been the better way to capture the sentiment in the book? I think what literature does best that movies fail to do is best exemplified in this movie. It’s how the emotion evolves over long time passage. Part of the wonders of the book is the opportunity for us to see how Salmon watches her family through the years. How she aches for them, how she wants Ray Singh her boyfriend, and how precious her moment with him is at the end when she borrows her best friend's body. But somehow when all this was expressed on the screen, it lost its power, and we had to understand everything intellectually rather than emotionally.

There are a couple of sequences I really liked in the movie, though. The scene that Harvey attacks Salmon in the underground shed is pretty scary, and I was worried that Jackson would show the ugly and disturbing images of Harvey attacking her. But instead, he shows her getting away. For a moment I thought she actually does get a way. But the tone of the sequence remains horrifying, and soon after we realize the world around her is different. It looks like heaven (or hell), the lights are extremely bright, and the streets are eerily empty. Then we know she has already been killed by Harvey.

Another scene I liked is where her sister Lindsey finds Harvey's journal under his bedroom floor. There is an intercut sequence of her carefully putting the wood back in place, while Harvey is listening intently in the basement. She inevitably makes a sound, and the chase ensues. I thought it was a pretty original scene.