The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones (2009) is adapted from Alice Sebold's novel and stumbles while trying to solve the book's hardest problem. Susie Salmon is murdered at fourteen. She narrates the story herself from an in between place after her death, watching her family, her killer, and the world continuing without her. The novel barely describes that place; it stays in the reader's head. Peter Jackson decided to visualise it, and that is where the film breaks. What emerged is a bright, colourful, digital heaven, and it occupies far too much screen time. Below there is a family disintegrating; above there are visual effects. What genuinely works is the killer. The neighbour Stanley Tucci plays is ordinary, courteous and completely invisible. The scene in the underground room and the tension after it are the strongest part of the film, and Tucci was nominated for an Oscar. Saoirse Ronan was fifteen. Jackson had come from The Lord of the Rings and applied the same scale of visual approach here; the material cannot carry it. Most people who loved the book disliked the film, and the reason is clear: the book was about grief and the film became about heaven. It runs 135 minutes. Good for: drama, book adaptations, and supernatural narrative. Less good for: the murder of a child is the central subject and sexual assault is implied. It is hard to watch.