The Sea (2013) Reviews

• A magnificent elegiac poem set on the Wexford coast

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  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.

• Poignant Film About Memory and Loss

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  Max Morden (Ciaran Hinds) has lost his wife Anna (Sinead Cusack) to cancer, and tries to compensate by staying at a lonely hotel presided over by Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling). During his childhood, he stayed there with his family, when the hotel was a large house with chalets attached; he stayed at the chalets, and befriended the family of a husband (Rufus Sewell), wife, two children and their "minder" Rose (Bonnie Wright). The older Max spends much of his time recalling that period, while at the same time reliving his last days with Anna. He feels a terrible sense of loss: during his childhood he experienced the first pangs of love and death - feelings that were repeated when cancer claimed his wife. Photographed in atmospheric colors by John Conroy - bright for the childhood sequences, dark for the present-day moments involving the aging Max, THE SEA is a poignant meditation on the complexities of the past. However much Max might have wanted to change what happened, all he can do is to relive it in his mind; sometimes it has the habit of repeating itself (as seen, for instance, in the last exchanges he has with Anna before she passes away). Stephen Brown's narrative unfolds at a slow pace, with plenty of close-ups of the adult Max's tortured face as he tries - and fails - to cope with his loss. The three-leveled plot - childhood, Anna's death, and the adult Max in the hotel - seems a little complex at first, but resolves itself at the end when we discover the true identity of Miss Vavasour and the mysterious pseudo-military man Blunden (Karl Johnson), the only other guest staying at the hotel. Some of the individual sequences are almost achingly poignant, especially the moment where Max lies on the beach next to the seashore in a vain attempt to commit suicide. Shot on a low budget, with a screenplay by John Banville (from his own novel), THE SEA offers a convincing insight into the mind of a tortured soul.

• Ultimately a simple, well-made film

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  This film adaptation of John Banville's book by the same name, is irritatingly compelling and ultimately lacklustre in a really intriguingly enjoyable kind of way… that probably doesn't make sense right now, but by the end of the film you'll understand, or at least begin to understand – much like the plot of the film, which starts off slow but builds to a very pleasing climax. Initially it's somewhat up and down - getting lost in its own narrative at times, with no clear intention of where the story's heading. Once we become invested in the characters they begin to reveal the humanity of the story which is a very emotional recounting of the glory of past life experiences, and the harrowing reality of the progression of life for our main character, Max Morden. Beautiful warm and cold colour grades serve to separate the cheerful, innocent flashbacks from the much bleaker present day narrative. Every image and colour is used effectively to add to the story, and coupled with engaging performances from every actor present, this makes for a seamless viewing experience that's unique and enjoyable – although somewhat slow in its pacing at times. Where the film really struggles is in its efforts to manage the various narrative strands and how they play with each other. Unfortunately, it fails to uphold each strand all the time – sometimes leaving you wishing that the next flashback could come sooner, rather than later. Simplicity is at the foundation of any creation, and it's from there you build on the layers to develop the project – "The Sea" skipped a few levels and tried to accomplish too much in its narrative at times, and while ultimately a simple, very well made film, it loses focus and dips too often to maintain the fantastic tone it sets for itself.

• Oh, I don't like to be beside the seaside...

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  The Sea is comprised of three different threads, each thread containing respected British actors. In the modern day we have art historian Max Morden (Ciarin Hinds), a gloomy middle-aged Irishman who is predictably an alcoholic widower. He's visiting the place where he used to holiday as a child. It's run by poised landlady and mystery woman Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling). In the recent past, there is Max's tending after his wife who is dying of cancer (Sinead Cusack). And in the very past (the 1970s) we see twelve-year-old Max's holiday romance and the wealthy family he spends his time with, the eccentric patriarch Carlo (Rufus Sewell) and his yummy mummy wife Connie (Natasha McElhone), who gets the young boy's hormones stirring. From the looks of the cinematography, you'd think that this was a Chekhovian tragedy. The present is shot in horrible blue and grey tones, both reflecting and emphasising the dullness of the events. Hinds' portrayal of Max (Matthew Dillon) is unsympathetic; he comes across as a gloomy old bore, dragging down the narrative. Sure, a suicidal protagonist isn't going to be cheery but Colin Firth pulls it off nicely in A Single Man, showing a man who is clearly lonely and consumed by grief but doesn't wallow in his own misery. Equally as boring is the flashbacks to his wife, which serve to make the whole affair even more gloomy and weepy. It's completely unnecessary to show his wife and it slows down the only narrative which actually has some potential: Max's boyhood. These days were happy days so everything is artificially sunny. Dillon does a good job as the charming boy with a crush and Missy Keating as the family's daughter, is cruel and flirtatious. The film nicely shows Max's budding sexual desires without being coy or tasteless. Another nice touch is how the affairs of Carlo and Connie are seen through the boy's eyes. He can only partially comprehend them; actually with Connie's he can barely comprehend it, so we only get a glimpse. The parents are written as charicaturish bohemians, particularly Carlo, so whilst Rufus Sewell doesn't really add any deeper layers, he is not entirely to blame for his performance. I don't know why the duller modern story is made to take precedence over the much more interesting (if perhaps well-trodden ground) past. None of the narratives really string together; there's a sense of faux-mystery throughout, with the underlying sense that the constant meandering and 'leisurely' pace won't come together into anything satisfying. The end 'twist' is not really a surprise; the surprise is that it is presented as a surprise. And the conclusion of the childhood narrative comes out of nowhere and has no apparent motivation. Lack of motivation is present in all of the characters; a fault of John Banville's screenplay. He is adapting his own novel so it's odd that the writing should be so weak. It feels as if he copy-pasted the small percentage of dialogue in his novel and left it at that, without translating the prose into cinematic terms. Relationships aren't fleshed out; nothing is mined beyond the surface. We are told that Max is writing a book on Pierre Bonhard but we never see anything relating to that so the detail feels pointless. Max's daughter wanders in pointlessly to tell her dad to stop being gloomy and alcoholic; not that he's going to listen to that. This is really a melodramatic weepy masquerading as an art film about grief and memory. If you're searching for the latter, try A Single Man; try Atonement if you're looking for an exploration of sexuality through a child's eyes. Brideshead Revisited (the TV series; avoid the film) is a great story of an individual being lured by an eccentric and luxurious family. Summer Interlude is a charming and poetic study of idyllic childhood shattered by tragedy. These are only a handful of films similar to The Sea and yet superior.

• Pretty lil' diamond

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  By lil' I mean not too many characters, so the few shown kindled a spark in the viewer to the warm and sensitive nature of the ones shewed. The background kept harking back to a grey and gloomy setting while in its stead we are back in the present and things look colorful and teeming with delicious flavor. The pall that seems to mingle with the theme really never is truly diminished yet the candor of the story really shines through and gives you a joyful almost singular start. You really want to see what this is all about but not so much you want to escape from the protagonists sojourn into his own profound escape. I just get a sense that things didn't pan out the way he hoped but in the bargain he seemed to get a lot more. Very introspective, very cold and bleak at times while others the moment seems to linger and resonate with all that is living in the moment. One line that strikes and jolts one out of apathy and self-imposed resignation, when his wife tells him, 'You are always living in the past'. It seems he was always so worried about all the possible things that could happen he sometimes forgot to simply let go and really give it your all in the nonce. The scenery was ample and sweet warming me at times and at others giving me slight chills; the score was eerie at moments and others it really tugged at my heartstrings pulling me thither and hither, whilst all the ancillary characters enriched the natural progression of the plot with stylistic courses; and finally a culminating to a glorious ending which for some reason seems to be the very beginning of the protagonist... Cool flix, recommend it.