The Sea

Following the death of his wife, Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds) returns to his childhood seaside world. He stays with Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling) from his past and a trauma from childhood comes rushing back. As a child, he befriends twins Chloe Grace and Myles Grace from the town. Myles is mute and Chloe is mercurial. They have a rambunctious house with parents Connie (Natascha McElhone) and Carlo (Rufus Sewell) along with young nanny Rose.

The present day story is a bit too jumbled. Certainly, the film is doing something with memories and holding back a big reveal. The back and forth between the different times with the accompanying confusing rekindled memories is a big hurdle. The present day flow is compromised. On the other hand, the past story is very compelling. I like the weird kids, the weird parents, and the mysterious Rose situation. It would be better with a simplified present day reveal and a straight forward past narrative story.

Well it was kinda complicated for me. It wasn't that good and u can find better movies easily. Ngl I've watched it cause of Bonnie Wright. If u have much time watch it.

Lost in a fog of alcohol and memory pain, Max returns to the seaside town where his family summered when he was a boy. Told across three timelines, we feel the jumble of his thoughts and the hopelessness of his present situation. Most compelling are the flashbacks of his youth, where he befriends a well to do family, and becomes entangled with their children, developing a crush on their young daughter. There's some beautiful cinematography, and parts of a fascinating tale, but overall this is a little muddled to be a true recommendation. The alternating timelines are handled well, but I guess the viewer is a little shortchanged, in wanting more of a firm resolution. Worth a mild recommendation, for the solid acting and interesting premise. Thumbs in the middle.

Man Booker Prize-winning novels are too hard to adapt, and except for a few hits like Schindler's List (1993) and Life of Pi (2012), all adaptations are either dull or totally a mess. This tragic drama is one such non-electrifying film.

Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds) is an aged art historian who has come back to the seaside place where he used to spend his vacations as a child. He is currently grieving the loss of a loved one and is also hoping to find peace from a childhood incident which made him the way he is now. The story follows Morden's life as flashbacks of his time with his newfound friends, a twin siblings, flip flop between the episodes of present tense.

Hinds is the only aspect of the film which is appealing. The supporting characters are too abrupt in their approach, making the film look like it was conceived for people who have already read the book. Even for those who have, the lackluster, non-linear screenplay will induce ennui, just enough to put them to sleep if they are not startled by the sudden, repetitive crescendos towards the end. Banville clearly fails as a scriptwriter, trying to correct some of his novel's mistakes by adding extra salt to the already salty water. Brown's direction is also at fault, as the cast often look puzzled in their own characters' skins. The young actor who plays a young Morden is terrible.

The Sea is an average book exploring loss and grief and how a man tries and miserably fails to fix up his life post the events. The film is a lot less convincing, mostly because the sliding sequences just do not bring about any point that the author might have originally tried to convey. Read the book and move on to Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss".

BOTTOM LINE: Stephen Brown's "The Sea" is a lowbrow adaptation of a lowbrow fiction which can be best understood by reading its original source. Wait for TV premiere.

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? NO

It is difficult to believe that this is the first feature film directed by Stephen Brown (whoever he is, as nothing is recorded of him on IMDb). Brown shows unmistakable signs of being a master even though he is so new. At the beginning of his directorial career, he is already far ahead of so many directors who have been at it for years. Since it cannot be experience, it must be talent. The screenplay is written by John Banville, based on his own novel. Banville comes from County Wexford in Ireland, where this film was entirely set and shot on location on the Wexford coast, which is on the eastern side of Ireland, facing Wales across the Irish Sea. Indeed, it will surprise no one that it was made on the Wexford coast, considering the title of the film and that the sea is in a way the central character in the story. The lead in the film is played by the actor Ciaran Hinds. I wish I knew how to pronounce his Irish first name, but until corrected, I shall call him 'Kieran' when speaking. He has appeared in 91 films and is well known as a supporting actor. But here he gives a bravura performance in a lead role, finely judged, perfectly modulated, and shows what stuff he is really made of. He clearly always had it in him, and at last he got to prove it. Well done, Hinds! He is well supported by Sinead Cusack, Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell, and the dazzling Natascha McElhone, with a smile made of sunlight (and often shot in it). Cusack is filmed dying of cancer, and it takes a brave actress devoted to her craft to allow herself to look like that, and to speak wistful lines with ironical humour at the same time. Rampling, the master of the inscrutable, is, well you guessed it, inscrutable. Her last line in the film makes quite an impact, though before she spoke it, I had guessed. Sewell is called upon to play a rather flippant fellow, and has no trouble in doing so. A great deal of the film takes the form of flashbacks, and the child actors in the film are very good: Matthew Dillon plays Young Max (Hinds being old Max), and Missy Keating plays the girl twin, but I fear I am unsure of the name of the boy who plays the boy twin, as these two characters are not named on the IMDb cast list. The film and Hinds are haunted by the most bizarre and horrible tragedy, and an air of ravaging nostalgia is evoked brilliantly by the director. The main action of the film takes place after the death of his wife (Cusack), when Hinds revisits a seaside town on the Wexford coast, where he had had the memorable experiences of his youth, which shaped his entire life. We see these experiences and events in vivid flashbacks, and we come to understand fully why they have haunted Hinds for the rest of his life. The film is not a cheerful one, and anyone feeling depressed, or grieving, should probably not watch it. For those who can survive watching a film with a great deal of sadness in it, it is the equivalent of a major literary work, and of course it is derived from a novel scripted by the novelist himself, so it retains all of its high literary qualities, which are so well served by the director. It is certainly a high point in Irish cinema. I await the next work by Stephen Brown with great expectations. As for John Banville, he has been producing important work for the cinema for some time now. He did the excellent screenplay for THE LAST September (1999, see my review), for ALBERT NOBBS (2011), and for the excellent Irish TV series QUIRKE, based on his own novel (2014, see my forthcoming review). He has also worked with the talented Irish director Thaddeus O'Sullivan (writing SEASCAPE, 1994), who directed the amazing THE HEART OF ME (2002, see my review) as well as the superb series SINGLE-HANDED (2010, see my review). Those creative Irish can get up to things, and we had better keep on our eye on them. And now there is a new one, Stephen Brown, to watch out for.