The Light Between Oceans

There’s been a lot, maybe too much, writ­ten about the over­lap between movies and nov­els. Because they sit in a sphere that exist just out­side the remit of what we might coin as ​“pop­u­lar enter­tain­ment” (in short: they take ages to read), the term nov­el is now used as a byword for a more cul­ti­vat­ed, high qual­i­ty and seri­ous art­form. The new film by Derek Cian­france, The Light Between Oceans, has been adapt­ed from a 2012 nov­el by ML Sted­man, and if you didn’t know that, it wouldn’t take a lit­er­ary genius to guess it.

Why? Well, it’s hard to say exact­ly. There’s a con­stant, nag­ging feel­ing that some­thing vital is being lost in trans­la­tion. The sto­ry is an over-sea­soned gum­bo of lum­ber­ing con­trivances and log­ic-defy­ing melo­dra­ma. Per­haps the big dif­fer­ence is that, with a nov­el, you’re forced to acti­vate your imag­i­na­tion, there­by cre­at­ing a nat­ur­al psy­cho­log­i­cal par­ti­tion between fic­tion­al events and real­i­ty. The act of read­ing is a con­stant reminder of a con­trived, fan­ci­ful and pos­si­bly metaphor­i­cal world, and that is just fine. Film is a lit­er­al, visu­al medi­um, so see­ing an inter­pre­ta­tion of the words instant­ly does away with any nuance, any feel­ing that this thing could be big­ger than it instant­ly appears. And that is fine too.

The Light Between Oceans has what you might call a ​‘very big ask’ at its core – a deci­sion made by its cen­tral char­ac­ters which is so unlike­ly, so dif­fi­cult to under­stand, and so under­min­ing of their moral-under­pin­ning as ​“good” peo­ple, that it’s a make or break thing. Every detail in the film offers either con­text for or reper­cus­sions of this spe­cif­ic moment. It could be some­thing Cian­france specif­i­cal­ly keys in to a sub­jec­tive read­ing – a dare to the audi­ence to go along with the idea, or reject it out­right. Per­son­al expe­ri­ence may come into play as a way to help uncov­er the obscure char­ac­ter moti­va­tions. Or it they may come into play for the oppo­site reasons.

Michael Fass­ben­der stars as Tom, a bash­ful, angu­lar World War One sol­dier who has been scarred by his stint on the front line. He accepts a job as a light­house keep­er on a remote, stun­ning­ly scenic island off the Aus­tralian coast, hop­ing that an extend­ed peri­od of soli­tude will help him to gath­er his mar­bles. Though he has wit­nessed death, he is not immune to its hor­rors. Enter flighty, elfin charmer, Isabel (Ali­cia Vikan­der), who instant­ly falls for Tom and opts to keep him company.

They mar­ry. She soft­ens him up, even shav­ing off his offi­cious pen­cil mous­tache. They frol­ic in fields, chase after lambs, and embrace against breath­tak­ing, peach-hued sky­lines. Almost as a for­mal­i­ty, they attempt to have chil­dren, but twice fail. Wracked with grief, con­fu­sion and mater­nal yearn­ings, the pair decide to hap­pi­ly shirk the laws of the land and jeop­ar­dise their entire future by tak­ing advan­tage of a very, very, very hap­py coincidence.

It’s a tricky sit­u­a­tion. The equiv­a­lent would be a gor­geous, immac­u­late white wall with a dirty brown splotch right in the mid­dle. Even though it’s just one small aber­ra­tion, it serves to spoil the entire wall. There’s a lot of good work here, not least the enam­el­ware and Bake­lite 1930s pro­duc­tion design and the fresh, bucol­ic cin­e­matog­ra­phy by Adam Arka­paw. Though much of the film focus­es on Vikan­der and Fass­ben­der as they emote hard for the cam­era, it’s a sup­port­ing turn by Rachel Weisz (who is on a major roll at the moment) which deliv­ers far more coiled nuance and unaf­fect­ed emo­tion than the two leads.