Une vie entre deux océans

Derek Cianfrance, who directed the poignant Blue Valentine and the riveting The Place Beyond the Pines, brought probably the best out of Michael Fassbender and Rachel Weisz in quite some time, even if the film pulls at your heart strings a few too many times.

Amidst the beautiful landscaping shots of sunsets, beaches, and oceanic views, Cianfrance crafts the story of a couple who desperately want a child but can't have one, extremely well. As much as this film deals with tragedy, grief, and sorrow there was something so beautiful about the way Cianfrance tells the story. It unfortunately becomes flooded with sadness and difficult circumstances, but I never stopped rooting for these characters. Even when they are at the brink of a bad decision, I wanted the best.

That can be directly contributed to the terrific performances from the cast, and particularly Fassbender, Vikander, and Weisz. Fassbender brings so much power and gravitas to his roles, but I've never seen him so vulnerable. We saw a peek at the emotional weight he can bring to his characters in X-Men: Apocalypse last spring, but nothing can prepare you for his heartbreaking turn in this film.

Vikander and Weisz are just as good. All 3 characters have bad qualities and choices that could turn them into unlikable human beings, but Weisz and Vikander add a graceful human touch to their roles. Though Vikander doesn't have children in real life, I believed she could be a mother someday with her turn. Weisz on the other-hand is a mother, and that motherly instinct exudes onto the screen. Both performances are so mind-bendingly good.

One of the issues that's been brought up about this film is its over-reliance on pulling at your heart strings. It's a valid argument, especially considering all of the tragedy and horrible circumstances that occur. I can't really say it's a film I will revisit, but at the same time, I found Cianfrance's directing and the performances enough to get over the depressing nature of the film's plot. It's not an easy watch by any stretch of the imagination, but it's an important one for sure.

+Oscar worthy performances from all 3 leads

+Beautifully shot

+Cianfrance's style

-Manipulative at times

7.7/10

"She doesn't belong to us. We can't keep her." Tom (Michael Fassbender)

I was ready to witness a Nicholas Sparks imitator with The Light Between Oceans; rather I enjoyed a whiff of Thomas Hardy. A newly-married couple, Tom and Isabel (Alicia Vikander), living on a remote lighthouse island off the west coast of Australia in the second decade of the twentieth century, find a baby washed ashore in a rowboat. The tension comes not from storms at sea but the ramifications of their keeping the child a secret.

Notwithstanding the absurd good fortune that they find a baby after her two miscarriages, the story becomes increasingly complex with intersecting themes of passionate love and doing the right thing. Where this does not become a maudlin, sentimental romance is in a few realistic details. Most of us would question whether we would keep the child, given that we may never have one ourselves, just as this couple does.

Along the way, the accomplished acting throws a powerful cast over the proceedings so that as outrageously melodramatic as it may seem, the film relentlessly shows at each turn how conscience does indeed make cowards of us all. Just as what he has done preys on Tom's conscience, the needs of his wife to have a child overcome this otherwise beacon of upright manhood and good sense.

The end of WWI brings survivors like Tom an overpowering guilt that he survived while so many others didn't. With the presence of a child who belongs to someone else, he is tortured by thoughts of taking a loved one away as the war did for so many families.

Fassbender is the Oscar contender he was meant to be. His every facial muscle works to show immense joy at his marriage and deep sorrow at his crime. Vikander is equally convincing as a youthful bride with grit and joy who convinces her husband, sworn to save lives in the lighthouse, to endanger himself and her by his foolish act.

The cinematography is frequently gorgeous, and the romantic Andre Desplat music lovely but manipulative. While writer and director Derek Cianfrance navigates occasionally successfully through some choppy tear-jerking scenes (the close-ups of Vikander's tears are too many), it's still also a melodrama with too many fateful turns.

Besides, what handsome, sensitive war veteran would exile himself to a lighthouse? Only if he knew Alicia Vikander would join him!

For those who were fans of the book, it was a great adaptation. It was slow, but that was certainly true to the book.

The acting was excellent, and I loved the cast. Fassbender and Weisz are always winners, of course - Vikander I have enjoyed in the three movies I've seen her in. She was great when she needed to be great in this movie - there were some very dramatic and poignant scenes, and she pulled them off.

I loved the cinematography – especially the scenes filmed on the island – the constant wind! That was something which was conveyed in the book, but it's hard to keep "constant ferocious screaming wind" in your head while reading, because it would be awful if it were mentioned every paragraph, yet it's easy to forget that crucial detail while reading – the movie definitely conveyed that. Very atmospheric.

Yes, it was on the slow side - so don't watch it while drowsy, and you should be fine!

This film tells the story of a married couple living in a remote lighthouse, who finds a drifting boat in the sea with a healthy baby and a dead man inside. They raise the baby as their own, but soon moral challenges arise and they find themselves at an important crossroad.

I'm impressed by how beautiful "The Light Between Oceans" is. The scenery is so beautiful that it makes me want to visit that place and feel its serenity. The pain of the couple and their reasons for making such a decision is well portrayed in the film, and I do feel for them for having live with the consequences of their wrongs. The story is really beautiful because it is a story of love, and paradoxically tells that sometimes the right thing to do may not be the right thing to do. It is so hard to determine what is right and what is wrong in this situation, thereby creating a conflict which keeps the film captivating. I'm deeply moved by both Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander's performances. The film haunts me after it finishes, and I'm still affected by it and ruminating about it.

After I read the novel, I hoped not be adaptated as film. For its touching beauty , on screed becoming only chain of impressive images but without reflect, in fair way, the emotions, powerful ones , proposed by book.

Ironically, exactly this adaptation was the kick to read The Light Between Oceans. Its virtues - off course, the images. But , maybe, more important , admirable performance of Rachel Weisz.

It is fair to write about this film the perfect adaptation , because not easy to imagine more. The work of. M. L. Stedman has the gift a dialogue, a very special one, with the viewer. The film can only offers the skin of this conversation. Beautiful locations, admirable acting, resurrected emotions, correct crafted episodes , the end. A sort of remind or hommage. So, with a strange word, the happy version of a profound impressive novel. The gratitude to director and actors as first duty.