The Deep End of the Ocean Review
by Jonathan Richards (TYAA18B AT prodigy DOT com)March 19th, 1999
Jonathan Richards, THE SANTA FE REPORTER
THE SON ALSO RISES
THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN
Directed by Ulu Grosbard
Screenplay by Steven Schiff from Jaquelyn Mitchard's novel
With Michelle Pfeiffer, Treat Williams
PG-13 108 min.
The good news is that Ulu Grosbard's adaptation of Jaquelyn Mitchard's kidnapping bestseller steers scrupulously clear of the tear- jerking excesses you might expect. The bad news is it seldom engages your emotions. It's got moments of tremendous tension, and it provides a lot to think about. But it never pierces the place where we feel. The story, for those who have ignored Oprah's exhortation to read the book, is about Beth Cappadora (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose 3-year-old son Ben disappears from a crowded Chicago hotel lobby while she is registering for a high school reunion (it was a very good-looking class.) She's wracked with guilt, and shuts herself off emotionally from the rest of her family -- 7-year-old Vincent (Cory Buck), baby Kerry, and husband Pat (Treat Williams).
And then nine years later, when the family, still miraculously together, has moved to Chicago, a neighbor boy named Sam (Ryan Merriman) shows up at the door to mow the lawn. Beth takes one look at him and knows: it's Ben.
But we're only halfway through the movie, which extends way beyond the normal kidnapping story and explores the complexities of what's right and what's wrong for all involved when nobody still alive is to blame. Like Natalie Wood in John Ford's "The Searchers", the boy has forgotten his first family and loves the one he's grown up in. When he does return, he doesn't know them and they don't know him. "We've missed a lot of years," says Pat.
Grosbard digs around in a cold fire of family and social issues, prodding sparks out of the embers. He keeps us busy with things to consider, such as the role of the press, which the family uses to publicize and plead when the boy goes missing, and then shuts out when it swoops down on them in a feeding frenzy of intrusive questions. We're asked to think about such things as how much grief and guilt is allowed and how much becomes excessive when you lose a child. "You may think you're a rotten mother," the detective
(Whoopi Goldberg) tells Beth, urging her back to her other two kids, "but you're the only one they've got."
But they don't get enough of her, and neither does her husband; a big piece has gone with Ben, and though she pastes on smiles and goes on living, she's a long way from whole.
There's some excellent acting, led by the tightly-wound and wounded Pfeiffer, whose early radiance vanishes under her burden of guilt. Vincent (as a teenager played with compelling sullenness by General Hospital's Jonathan Jackson) has his load of guilt too -- he let go of his brother's hand when he was minding him. And Pat labors under the guilt of blaming Beth, though he tries to conceal it. They're a poster family for dysfunctionality. The trouble is, they're so unable to communicate that they fail to communicate with us as
well.
Grosbard doesn't pander to his audience, but he seems to be trying so hard not to that he skips along the surface of this story, hurrying from this scene to that, telling us with edgy coolness what's at issue and what's at stake, but never bringing us in to share it.
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