The Light Between Oceans

Tom, back from the First World War, takes a lighthouse keeper's post on a deserted island off the Australian coast. After he and his wife Isabel lose two children, a boat washes ashore with a dead man and a living baby in it. They decide to raise the child as their own. Years later it emerges who her mother is. Derek Cianfrance directed, from M. L. Stedman's 2012 novel. Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz star. Filming ran from September to November 2014 in New Zealand (Dunedin, Port Chalmers, the Otago Peninsula) and Tasmania, with locations including a historic prison and working lighthouses. It premiered in Venice on 1 September 2016 and opened in North America the next day. On a 20 million dollar budget it grossed 26 million worldwide, taking only 12.5 million domestically despite a 1,500-theatre release. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 62 percent, Metacritic at 60, CinemaScore at B plus. Critics admired the performances but wrote that the narrative machinery creaks and undercuts belief. Who it is for: viewers who like heavy melodrama, landscape and stories built on a moral dilemma. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for coincidence. The plot runs on a chain of them.