|
The Sea
| Released |
18 April 2014 |
| Director |
Stephen Brown |
Starring
|
Ciarán Hinds, Charlotte Rampling, Natascha McElhone, Rufus Sewell, Bonnie Wright, Missy Keating, Sinéad Cusack, Ruth Bradley |
| Writer(s) |
John Banville |
Producer(s)
|
David Collins, Michael Robinson, Luc Roeg |
| Origin |
Ireland, United Kingdom |
| Running Time |
86 minutes |
| Genre |
Drama |
| Rating |
12A |
|
|
That sinking feeling.
For John Banville’s sake I hope none of the Man Booker Prize judges go to see the adaptation of his award-winning book The Sea; it’s so terrible that they may be compelled to strip him of his 2005 prize. I haven’t read the book myself but by all accounts it’s a beautifully written, poetic novel. Quite what happened between the page and the screen is anyone’s guess but I think it’s safe to say that while Banville may be a novelist of extreme talent, he will never pick up an award for his screenwriting.
Ciaran Hinds plays a writer called Max, whose wife (Sinead Cusack) has recently passed away after a long illness. Struggling with his grief, he decides to hide away in his past, taking a room in a guesthouse in a town by the sea where he holidayed as a child. In flashback we visit the recent past to examine the fractious relationship he had with his wife before her passing and further back, to a summer when he fell in with the bohemian Grace family.
This is director Stephen Brown’s first film and it shows. The film feels stylistically amateurish, both visually and in tone and the clumsy editing between sepia-tinged past and colour-drained present is almost comical. Directing actors also seems to have been a difficult task for Brown; the impressive cast give performances that are well below their usual standards. Giving the benefit of the doubt, perhaps Brown was trying to make the point that memory can often be more vivid and emotionally heightened than reality but even bearing this in mind, the performances are ludicrously over the top. Rufus Sewell is the worst offender, turning his role as the charismatic patriarch of the Grace family, into a gurning caricature. Natasha McElhone is similarly on the nose; just look at the way she gulps down her wine with exaggerated relief so as to emphasise to the hard of thinking that she has a drinking problem. Hinds meanwhile, lurches about wrapped in misery and a selection of tasteful knitwear, his wide-eyed desperation more ludicrous than tragic.
It is historically true that a lot can be lost between the page and the screen but The Sea is a particularly bad example of the transition from one art form to another. What was a meditation on grief and memory becomes overwrought melodrama and dialogue that may have been poetic on the page becomes stilted and unrealistic when spoken.
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Linda O’Brien |
