| "The
Ballad of Jack and Rose"
Daniel
Day-Lewis. Camilla Belle. Drama.
Synopsis:
A dying father attempts to cope with his 16-year old daughter’s
coming of age.
Review:
This movie showed a lot of potential, but ultimately, it didn’t
deliver.
Jack (Daniel
Day-Lewis) is an engineer living with his young daughter Rose (Camilla
Belle) on a commune on an island off the East coast of America.
But the two are the last remaining members of the commune, so it
makes things difficult, trying to cultivate the land and maintain
the buildings, etc.
Jack invites
his love interest Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two teenage
boys to live with them on the island. This creates a number of uncomfortable
situations, as teenage boys accustomed to the conveniences of 1986
(televisions, etc) now inhabit a house built into the side of a
hill with a lost hippie and his socially isolated daughter.
There are
a number of ironic paradoxes in play - a commune funded by the inheritance
of one of its members, a man dying from a terminal heart condition
who insists on chain smoking - that adds to the heaviness of this
film.
At the same
time, there are strong Oedipal implications beginning to surface
between Jack and Rose, and the introduction of Jack’s new
lover only exacerbates the issue.
Rose’s
isolated upbringing has only sharpened her immaturity, and she fully
intends to commit suicide when her father dies.
The acting
is good all around, as is the film’s setting. I’m just
not sure if there was one theme or message that I was supposed to
take away from this film. Things got muddled quickly, and were never
really clarified.
OVERALL
GRADE: C+
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