(8 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)
Loading …Rent Movie.com movie reviews presents The Shipping News Movie Review a 2002 film starring Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore and directed by Lasse Hallström The Shipping News is unusual, filled with mystery, drama, and a wonderful sense of place. It’s a film about overcoming tragedy and personal shortcomings, yet there is nothing predictable or familiar about it. The characters are unique, the setting is breathtaking, and Kevin Spacey is perfect as the awkward, failure-haunted Quoyle. Like Quoyle, we find our own way in his world. Without judgement, the events play out and the past is revealed. We start out as clueless and as he is and, by the end, are as blessed as he is by his healing. Be sure, though, to watch the film before you read the book - or wait a few years. Though the film shows strong and true on its own, it is a pale, small experience compared to E. Annie Proulx’s exquisite prose. Like grading on a curve, the book makes the A grade of the film look more like a B by comparison.
Shanti Mai
shantimai.rentmovie.com
Comment by Deborah MacGillivray “Author, A Restless Knight; The Invasion of Falgannon Isle; Ravenhawke”
# January 1, 2007,
Kevin Spacey first snapped my attention as Mel Proffit on the CBS telly series WISEGUY. He played a drug dealing, jet-setting, psycho that went around killing people, freaking out and saying things like “only the toes knows…”. Well, if the toes knew, they must have know what a big star Spacey would be in just a few years. He choses films that stretch his untouchable range in the Usual Suspects, the serial killer in 7, the gentle soul claiming to be an alien in the wonderfully moving K-Pax to this gem of a film The Shipping News. This was a gentle, loving, heart-lifting book, so I feared when it came to the screen, all the quirkiness that made it so special might be lost. Instead, it is beautiful realised under Spacey brilliant performance, backed by the ever eternal and radiant Juliana Moore and the utterly marvellous Judy Dench and the solid Pete Postlethwaite, and another super tour de force for the ever solid Scott Glen.
This is a story that touches your heart, the way so many of Hollywood films fail to do, and leave you smiling at the end, and maybe even leaves you missing these near friends you have come to love. It is good to see films like that do so well, just a shame there is not more.
It is brilliantly written, with all the quirkiness you find in a small knit community, the isolation tend to make the locals revel in their bizarre personalities and even sort of wear them like a badge. I have seen this same ‘wee tight isle’ in Scotland and in Ireland and small towns in the US. Everyone knows everyone - knows the history as far back as it goes. The past is not so distant, where people with the sight is just an everyday occurrence.
Kevin Spacey plays a gentle soul, driven by an overbearing, likely abusive father to believing he was nothing. He felt the world pasted him by until Petal jumped into his car. Petal is typical Hussy type, a lass out for fun and little else. For the first time, Kevin’s character feels that he no invisible. Petal gets pregnant, have a baby girl, Bunny, and then precedes to live life just as she always had, with good time guys and honky-tonks. She checks in long enough to upset Spacey, and pat the kid on the head. When the child is about 8, she slips away with child in tow, running away with the latest boyfriend. If that is not upsetting enough, Spacey’s father and mother decided life is the pits and check out.
In the midst of finding out Petal died in a car crash with her boyfriend, but sold Bunny to a black-market child adoption ring for six thousand dollars, Spacey’s long lost aunt,(Dench) turns up to steal her brothers ashes. (Won’t reveal what she does with them!! She encourages Spacey to take his daughter and move back to New Foundland to where his family comes from. Once there his daughter shows tendencies of ‘the sight’ but it is taken in stride.
Scott Glen owns the local paper and hired Spacey to write the shipping news. He fears failure in this, since Petal just reinforced his worthlessness instilled by his father. However, instead, he comes into his own. He also begins a tentative romance with Moore, with his daughter taking to her son, who suffered brain damage during birth.
Spacey faces his demons and learns to heal, as Dench confronts her own secrets and shames, and loves to move on.
The scenery is gorgeous, raining and foggy ( sorry I am a Scot and love a bit of the wet and fog makes me want to walk in it forever. This captures the moodiness, though the snow in May does make one shudder!)
This is just one beautiful movie. You cannot say anything higher.