In brief: if I was only going by performances, this would easily be one of the strongest dramas this year. But a drama also should have a strong backbone for drama with conflicts and consequences that ultimately have good payoff, and this one is... alright. There's too much heavy-handed symbolism in the first half (from a hellish storm hitting the lighthouse area as a womb ruptures) to rocks being held by Vikander's character as if it's also her uterus (which unintentionally made me giggle thinking of a line from Raising Arizona, which in a way this is most alike but done in full serious mode), and the last several minutes kind of rushes things along to a finale that is a wee bit more Nicholas Sparks than the movie should be. The Light Between Oceans gains some momentum as it goes along, but Arkapow's cinematography and Cianfrance's choices of the sea and sky and birds and other objects to photograph threatens to overwhelm the already This-Goes-to-11-Volume main cast.
All the same Fassbender, Vikander and Weisz get their eyes spectacularly wet and pained, and the existential plight of this married couple caught in the old Woody Allen maxum, "our lives consist of how we choose to distort it" (and the widowed mother made a seemingly permanent victim of this), who only want the best for this little girl (albeit in criminal terms of course) is felt deeply enough to make it a unique piece of filmmaking. It is certainly commendable that it simply gets to be on thousands of screens before Oscar season's officially begun and is not something too sappy that it's meant for teens or so restrained it gets stuck in the art house.
Featuring a massively adorable child actor who adds immeasurably to the problem for the characters, it all makes for a solid moral quandary that has its strengths and weaknesses, the kind of picture that, save some sexual elements, could have been in the Picture Shows of the 30's or 40's, perhaps with Maureen O'Hara or Joan Crawford in a lead role somewhere.
All the same Fassbender, Vikander and Weisz get their eyes spectacularly wet and pained, and the existential plight of this married couple caught in the old Woody Allen maxum, "our lives consist of how we choose to distort it" (and the widowed mother made a seemingly permanent victim of this), who only want the best for this little girl (albeit in criminal terms of course) is felt deeply enough to make it a unique piece of filmmaking. It is certainly commendable that it simply gets to be on thousands of screens before Oscar season's officially begun and is not something too sappy that it's meant for teens or so restrained it gets stuck in the art house.
Featuring a massively adorable child actor who adds immeasurably to the problem for the characters, it all makes for a solid moral quandary that has its strengths and weaknesses, the kind of picture that, save some sexual elements, could have been in the Picture Shows of the 30's or 40's, perhaps with Maureen O'Hara or Joan Crawford in a lead role somewhere.