The Shipping News Review
by Jerry Saravia (faust668 AT aol DOT com)November 4th, 2002
THE SHIPPING NEWS (2001)
Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
November 2nd, 2002
RATING: Two stars
A movie starring Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Scott Glenn and Julianne Moore? And directed by Lasse Hallstrom? I am there. Well, I was there and was underwhelmed. "The Shipping News" is fitfully engaging at times, but its haphazard moods and tones almost wreck it beyond belief, despite the talented cast and director.
For starters, Kevin Spacey has a most unusual role. He plays the hapless, dim-witted Quoyle, an inksetter for the Poughkeepsie News, who has an affair with a brunette tigress named Petal (Cate Blanchett). They get married, have a daughter named Bunny, and live in their own house. The trouble is Petal is having affairs on the side while Quoyle is left helpless raising their daughter by himself. "Why don't you get yourself a girlfriend," suggests Petal. One day, Petal leaves with Bunny, and a tragedy occurs where Petal dies and Bunny is left at some black market adoption agency. Naturally, Quoyle rescues her before his never-before-seen aunt, Agnis (Judi Dench), has come to collect the ashes of Quoyle's uncle. Oh, I forgot to mention that Quoyle's uncle dies.
At this point, "The Shipping News" has enough material for a feature-length film. Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, the movie's real journey begins when Agnis takes Quoyle and Bunny to Quoyle Point, Newfoundland, where everyone can get a fresh start. They stay at a house overlooking the countryside that is held by strong cables so it will not blow away (Canadian winds are fierce year round). Thus, Quoyle gets a job at the Gammy Bird, a newspaper where any fisherman can become a journalist with the right training. The newspaper's main stories involve car wrecks and oil tankers. Plus, there is a relationship involving a widow named Wavey (Julianne Moore, back with her eyebrows intact. I tend to notice these things when it involves my favorite actors). Wavey has a son and is grieving over the loss of her husband, or so we think.
"The Shipping News" runs 111 minutes and is too short for all the multiple characters and situations involved. For instance, the movie skims past Petal's character and her marriage to Quoyle in less than half an hour (and there are fleeting glimpses of Petal afterwards, particularly when Quoyle sees or talks to Wavey). Bunny is one of those odd children who is stubborn and unfriendly, and possibly a mental case according to Quoyle, and is able to see future events in her dreams. But after a while, the movie skips past her character completely and focuses on the journalists at the Gammy Bird, then focuses on Scott Glenn who plays Quoyle's boss, then shifts to Agnis's past, and on and on. The purpose of an adaptation is to basically focus on the theme of the novel, which I imagine would be Quoyle's transformation from small-town loser to an articulate and assertive man who discovers his roots and his needs. Knowing this much would mean that Bunny, Agnis, Wavey and Petal are the characters responsible for Quoyle's transition.
I would love to read the novel by Annie Proulx after seeing this film because, as always, too many characters are left underdeveloped as a result of the screenwriter's willingness to do too much. As I said, the cast is fine (though Dench struck me as being wooden), the breathtaking cinematography by Oliver Stapleton evokes a natural time and place, and the music by Christopher Young is enveloping in ways that most modern scores today are not. Yet Lasse Hallstrom's direction of the story's tonal shifts are garbled and perfunctory. The writing is unfocused, though peppered with some humorous touches (I like the headlines we hear in Quoyle's voice-overs). In the end, it's simply too much of a good thing.
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