The Shipping News, like The Remains Of The Day, is the sort of film that divides an audience into readers or watchers. Based on Annie Proulx's best-selling novel, The Shipping News is a meandering, visually lovely film that mostly proves there are some things on the page that cannot work on the screen. The movie seems to have translated thought and feeling into event; this is a compressed and linear version of lyrical goings-on.
It didn't work for this viewer.
Kevin Spacey stars in The Shipping News as Quoyle, a hollow man whose psychic injuries appear rooted in offhand parental cruelty and a near-drowning in childhood.
Abused, neglected, somehow asleep, Quoyle stumbles into marriage with a harridan (Cate Blanchett), has a daughter and eventually ends up in Newfoundland with his aunt (Dame Judi Dench). There, he rebuilds an emotional life for himself, even falling love with a local widow (Julianne Moore). Despite watery fears, flashbacks, boating mishaps, visions of history, ghostly presences and a bad toque, he becomes a mended soul.
To convey the voyage of a man who finds himself at last, Spacey keeps very still, speaks without much inflection and goes dead behind the eyes. Once in Newfoundland, our hero is thrust into the role of journeyman journalist, but it isn't long before the mind of a real writer is uncovered through his sensitive but untrammelled newspaper prose. Plus, newspaper sales go up. You go, Quoyle!
Meanwhile, everyone around Quoyle proves to be odd but lovable, and many have dark past deeds to contend with. Some scenes are rife with symbols, others with cymbals, and water imagery abounds.
Fans of Proulx's novel may be in a position to fill in the blanks mentally and will, we suspect, really like this movie. The characters are never quite three-dimensional, and that includes Spacey's portrayal of the central character. Still, the cast is impressive -- Gordon Pinsent, Scott Glenn, Rhys Ifans and Pete Postlethwaite included.
Under Lasse Hallstrom's direction, The Shipping News is large, soulful and somehow important. And then forgettable.
Sometimes a thousand words is worth a picture.
(This film is rated AA)
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