Review of The Shipping News (2001) by Everett J — 24 Apr 2008

[i]The Shipping News.

[/i]dir. Lasse Hallström.

This film illustrates how victories in small battles are what keep people afloat and drifting toward something infinitely worthwhile.

The story begins with a man named Quoyle (Kevin Spacey). He's a sad-sack with utterly low self esteem who happens upon a woman arguing with a man in a parking lot. She approaches Quoyle's car and lets her self in. This would be Petal (Cate Blanchett) and she and Quoyle have a physical relationship that leads to Petal becoming pregnant. The result is Bunny (played by the Gainer triplets, Alyssa, Kaitlyn and Lauren.) Petal can't be tied down and seems to sleep with anything with a zipper. The upshot is she takes Bunny one day and winds up dead in a terrible auto crash. Bunny is alright and father and daughter attempt to pick up the pieces. Then, more tragedy. Quoyle's father shoots his wife and then himself. Quoyle's Aunt Angis shows up and convinces Quoyle to move to Newfoundland because she grew up there and has demons to exorcise. Naturally, it takes quite a bit of time to readjust to the new landscape. The photography, by Oliver Stapleton is quite gorgeous at times; it is clean and the margins are sharp and precise. There is something dark and foreboding around every turn and the cinematography captures this nicely.

Bunny adjusts and befriends a slow kid named Herry (Will McAllister). Quoyle lands a job covering the shipping news and car accidents for a local paper. Quoyle meets his mother, Wavey Prouse (Julianna Moore) and sparks don't necessarily fly straight away. Indeed, the film is an awkward dance between Quoyle and Wavey and they both dive in and pull out at equal frequency. She tells the story that her husband died in a boating accident when actually he ran away with a younger woman and Wavey merely sank his boat to save face. Quoyle is still grieving at first and is unable to speak of much else but his dead wife. The open sea plays a huge part in the drama that unfolds. It's always threatening to swallow people up and this plays into a massive phobia that Quoyle has about water. When he was a boy his father tossed him in a lake and forced him to learn how to swim. It scarred him for life to the point that water became an arch fiend in his budding existence.

Cate Blanchett embodies the wounded Petal with a restless spirit. Petal possesses a strong aversion to life at home and finds her way with a number of men. She's brazen and somewhat unrefined. Blanchett gives her a dotty sensibility that comes through in her posture, outrageous attire, and manner of speaking. Julianne Moore slips into the skin of her character with great ease. She plays Wavey as slightly damaged and unsure about what to do with Quoyle. She's something of a mother figure for him at first and this aspect of the film is quite delightful and charming. Again, the tragedies keep mounting up. It is discovered that the Quoyle clan is made up of pirates who ransacked and looted various boats until they were ran out of the area. They were also cold-blooded murderers and these facts naturally do not sit well with Quoyle. He reacts as if his entire existence is predicated on a lie. Still, he continues working with a number of off-kilter fellows at the newspaper. Tert Card (Pete Postlethwaite) is the main editor who takes it upon himself to completely rework a story Quoyle writes about oil spills. Postlethwaite captures the man's strange mixture of arrogance and fear. Beaufield Nutbeem (Rhys Ifans) is a sympathetic sort who is lackadaisical and doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to do anything whatsoever. Still, he claims he is staying only until his boat is fixed; a party is thrown in his honor and local hooligans smash up his boat effectively grounding his plans. Ifans is decidedly mellow to the point that he doesn't seem to have much of a pulse by the end. As Quoyle's boss, Jack Buggit, Scott Glenn is decidedly gritty and coarse and distracted.

Overall, one of the best thing about this film are the names of the characters. They are lyrical and unusual and fit perfectly into a cinematic idea of small town life near the edge of the world. This is a poignant story about one man's growing pains and his difficulty in forging emotional ties. Quoyle has all but been destroyed by events in his life. He's haunted by his immediate past and shortly becomes burdened with knowledge of the distant past. It's safe to say that we he comes to Newfoundland he doesn't quite know who he is and moreover he doesn't know where to look. He's got a daughter to care for and is in great need of a woman's touch. He just needs someone who dares to understand him and won't let him succumb to the raw depression that has afflicted him much of his life. He learns something exceedingly awful about his father and this merely adds to the lifelong grief that he's built up regarding this man. Ultimately, this is a film about readying oneself for redemption of a sort. It deals with slicing the throat of the albatross hanging about one's neck and turning the thing into a pie. Quoyle learns slowly, over a great deal of time, how to finally wield the knife.