B-
It would be easy to dismiss Derek Cianfrance’s “The Light Between Oceans” as the kind of movie only your mom’s book club would see with smuggled snacks and tissues in hand. On paper, it certainly reads that way: A lighthouse keeper and his young wife, after a series of miscarriages, find a baby washed up in a lifeboat and raise it as their own. Years later, the couple discovers that the child’s mother is alive and mourning her lost family, and they must face the consequences of their decision.
Despite its deceptively Nicholas Sparks-ian disguise, Cianfrance’s adaptation is a fierce, sweeping drama that takes M.L. Stedman’s popular book and vastly improves upon it. Starring Hollywood power couple Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender, the film struggles with uneven pacing but ultimately packs a painful punch.
To say “The Light Between Oceans” begins at a slow burn is the understatement of the year. We’re introduced to war veteran Tom Sherbourne as he applies for the position of lighthouse keeper on Janus, a remote island off the coast of western Australia. Haunted by the lives he took in the war, Tom is looking forward to some much needed solitude. But his plan hits a snag when he meets and falls in love with Vikander’s Isabel, who soon joins him on the island as his wife.
Isabel is Tom’s foil in many ways — giddy where he is stoic, volatile where he is restrained, irrational where he is calculated — but Cianfrance dedicates a good chunk of the film to showing how the couple complements each other. It’s when tragedy strikes, and Isabel has a string of miscarriages, that the balance between Tom and Isabel’s personalities begins to fall.
“The Light Between Oceans” isn’t lacking in heartwrenching moments, but one scene in particular — Isabel’s second miscarriage — verges on the emotionally unbearable. Fortunately, the story takes a much needed turn soon after when the couple discovers a lifeboat, which carries a baby and her dead father. Tom goes against his better judgment and allows Isabel to adopt the child, burying the body and claiming that the child is theirs.
The story begins to twist and turn from that point on, and in the interest of preventing further spoilers, let’s just say that it gets ugly. Rachel Weisz takes a second-half turn as the child’s bereft biological mother, and her character’s backstory is one of the highlights of the uneven third act of the film.
Cianfrance takes his sweet time with the first hour or so of the movie, but crams the climax of the story into an unfulfilling barrage of events. Audiences (even those who read the book) will likely be displeased with the final scene, although they’ll still shed a tear or two.
Despite the pacing problems and rough ending, the film is ultimately saved by its cast. Demonstrating once again why they’re the most talented couple in the business, Vikander and Fassbender elevate “The Light Between Oceans” from melodramatic sob-fest to elegant, aching period piece. To be fair, Cianfrance does his part too, harkening back to “Blue Valentine” techniques as the camera cuts from stark landscapes to painful closeups of his oft-desolate characters.
While Fassbender’s performance is as solid as ever — no one does repressed agony quite like him — he seems the teensiest bit miscast as the soft-spoken, morally sound lighthouse keeper. Towards the end of the film, as — SPOILER ALERT — Tom spends a few weeks rotting in jail, it’s hard to look at Fassbender and not feel the slightest bit like he might belong there. It would be easy to congratulate him for playing against type and leave it at that, if not for the pitch-perfect choice of Vikander as his leading lady.
“Magnetic” is a term thrown around a bit too often when referring to impressive performances, but Vikander earns it yet again. Isabel, at times naïve and selfish, would be an easy character to hate if done wrong, but Vikander grounds her in that strange limbo between child and mother. It’s hard to compete with Vikander’s naked emotion, but Weisz and Fassbender are almost equally formidable scene partners.
Thanks to a range of committed, painful performances, “The Light Between Oceans” is a gorgeous, heartbreaking story that will hit a nerve with all audiences, parents and children alike. Next time Mom heads out to the movies with her book club, it might just be worth tagging along.
