The Shipping News
by Lasse Hallström
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DVD details
Actor: Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Julianne Moore, Kevin Spacey, Pete PostlethwaiteDirector: Lasse Hallström
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Producer: Bob Weinstein
Producer: Diana Pokorny
Producer: Harvey Weinstein
Producer: Irwin Winkler
Producer: Leslie Holleran
Writer: Annie Proulx
Writer: Robert Nelson Jacobs
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Unknown; Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Unknown; French (Original Language), Unknown
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 111 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-06-18
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Miramax
DVD Reviews of The Shipping News
DVD Review: You don't have the sense God gave a donut, do you?
Summary: 2 Stars
Are you a cereal eater? I find that I enjoy a cool bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats in the morning to best get my sleepy engine running. What I enjoy are the clusters of wholesome oats and honey that really do a wonder on my taste sensations. I like these clusters because, while they may be all different sizes, they are consistent with the rest of the cereal. These clusters do not stand out, or work as a solo meal, but instead work with the rest of the bowl to give me an overall great breakfast experience. If a person were to ask me about a way that The Shipping News could have been a better film, I believe I would have answered with the Honey Bunches of Oats analogy above. This film was full of nothing but character clusters that unfortunately could not work with the rest of the film. We had cluster after cluster of events taking place, raging from childhood rape to a wife's decision to spread false information all the way to a false autopsy (hopefully not giving too much away), but instead of making this a powerful film about human suffering, we are left with an unforgivable amount of lacking substance with each character, thus creating a horrid film which leaves you nothing to fully sink you teeth into.
Director Lasse Hallström has directed some great films like Cider House Rules as well as Chocolat, but The Shipping News will not be as successful as these films because of Hallström's lack of grip on the main subjects. He begins this film by focusing intently on Quoyle (Spacey) painting us a bold and vivid portrait of his past and leering present, but once we get this story in motion, Hallström quickens his pace and drops Quoyle to the backburner as we attempt to create a town of mishaps. Everyone is depressed, everyone has seen harder days, and everyone is jaded in this film because Hallström wants to demonstrate a village that sees the same problems that Quoyle does. For me, this didn't work. Instead of making the film as depressing as the scenery, perhaps he could have created a town a bit more realistic (maybe a bit more Capra-esque - although I didn't like it in Darabont's Majestic) which would allow the minimal characters to shine without the need to bring darkness into every story. What could have made this film stand out would be the smaller, more supportive character being funny, cute, or even a bit optimistic. Early in the film I accepted Quoyle for was who he was due to his life struggles, but I needed Hallström to give me a strong juxtaposition between where Quoyle was in Poughkeepsie to where he moved to in Newfoundland. I know he seemed like he was getting a better life, but to me Hallström seemed to force it and make the transition tired and without emotion. With the strength of the secondary characters, we could have seen a stronger transition for Quoyle in this new, yet familiar, home. The fact that everyone in town harbored some dark, nearly horrific story just felt cheap because we, as an audience, were forced to spread our sympathies thin, not sure whom to give it the strongest attention. In my eyes, the biggest error in Hallström's adaptation of this Pulitzer Prize winner was the lack of the environment, both living as well as scenic, surrounded Quoyle.
Typically Hallström has the ability to pull great work out of even the least favorite actor. I saw this with Toby Maguire in Cider House Rules, but alas, with this film it felt like everyone was just trying to stay warm so they swooped through their lines devoid of anything worth mentioning. Spacey doldrums his way through his character Quoyle, giving us yet another Pay It Forward spineless performance. Ebert said that "Spacey plays smart characters well", and I couldn't agree with him more. It just seems like lately Spacey has been afraid of those types and opts to rather play soft troubled characters where he never has to raise his voice. Julianne Moore was forgetful in this film. She has one type of character that she plays, and whether you watch this movie or Evolution or Magnolia, you typically see the same character just with a different name. While I have enjoyed some of her performances in the past, it seems as if as I watch her going forward, she seems to blend everything together. Her performance in this film reminded me of her performance in The Forgotten, but with a different accent. Dame Judi Dench only plays roles like this one, so it should be no surprise that she chose to participate in this film. Her character is confusing, which leads me to believe that Hallström didn't know quite to do with the power that Dench had to offer. The only actor that I believed did something spectacular in this film was Cate Blanchett. Her few moments on screen as Petal, also as the main catalyst for Quoyle, was breathtakingly refreshing. She was smart, sharp, and passionately not herself, who made for a character this critic wishes we saw more of during this sloppy film. Again, the clusters of characters in this film were never working together to defeat a common purpose, but merely being themselves, giving us no energy, and providing us with a film severely lacking in all core elements of cinema.
Overall, The Shipping News was a bust for Spacey fans, it was a bust for Hallström fans, and it was a bust for E. Annie Proulx's fans. I will always be the first to say that it is difficult work to recreate the inner-human from the written page, because a director could never physically put a character/actor in a place where the characters within the book are, it is mentally and physically impossible. There are some books that actually are translated well onto screen, but for this film, it did not happen. I blame the director in this case for thinking that because the scenery was horrid, the characters would need to be as well. I also place blame on the actors for not giving us enough dedication to their characters. If you are looking for a book that would accompany this film just as well, check out Iain Banks' "The Wasp Factory". It is one of those books that could never translate well into a film, but is just as depressing as this film is!
Grade: ** out of *****
Description of The Shipping News
After tragedy strikes quoyle a hapless lonely upstate new yorker decides to move he and his daughter to his ancestral home in newfoundland. In the small fishing village of killick-claw quoyle secures a job as a reporter at the local newspaper. Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 04/05/2005 Starring: Kevin Spacey Judi Dench Run time: 111 minutes Rating: RFans of Lasse Hallström's truffle, Chocolat, may enjoy the director's subsequent novel adaptation, the emotionally charged Shipping News. The opening sequence introduces us to the bumbling Quoyle (Kevin Spacey), an ink setter at the Poughkeepsie News; his hedonistic wife Petal Bear (Cate Blanchett); and their daughter Bunny. But we hardly get to meet the characters, much less connect with them, in the fewer than eight minutes allotted for the scene. Before you know it, Petal is dead in a car wreck, Quoyle's parents have committed suicide, and Quoyle and Bunny are headed off with Quoyle's aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) to start over in a small Newfoundland port town. As the main story ensues--Quoyle's transformation from passive victim to sensitive lover and eloquent columnist--the subplot of his sordid family history and his aunt's search for healing seems contrived and lifeless. While Julianne Moore, as the widow Wavey, gives a solid performance as Quoyle's love interest, Spacey's performance is uneven, never convincingly at sea enough to reward Quoyle's ultimate self-discovery. As with so many films adapted from novels, The Shipping News fails to embark confidently enough upon its own course to keep off the rocks. --Fionn Meade
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