Deep Oceans

It will be a shame if director Derek Cianfrance’s art-house style discourages a large audience from seeing the sweeping moral drama The Light Between Oceans.

Cianfrance (best known for 2010’s Blue Valentine) clearly owes something to Terrence Malick: He favors wide, contemplative shots of wind rustling through grass and dark clouds gathering over stormy seas, as well as tight, shaky shots focused on the tiny tics of facial expression that reveal restrained joy and suffering within.

It’s beautiful work, filmed off the rugged Australian coast in a story that takes place just after World War I. However, unlike Malick’s vague collection of poetic images strung together as story, Cianfrance is working with an actual plot—a crackerjack of a grand, historical tragedy adapted from the best-selling novel by M.L. Stedman. The film should have mass appeal, if audiences are willing to hang on through the indulgent, lingering moments.

Some of those scenes are necessary as they give today’s moviegoers time to reframe their thinking so they can empathize with Isabel, a sweet, 19-year-old girl, whose dearest ambition is to care for babies and a home with a man she loves.

Brilliantly played by last year’s Oscar winner for best actress, Alicia Vikander, Isabel’s desires are so fundamentally motherly, they cast a bit of an uncomfortable glare on 21st-century priorities, where children are often viewed as the capping accessory to career pursuits.

The answer to Isabel’s fantasies arrives in the form of Tom (a fantastic Michael Fassbender), a stoic and psychologically scarred veteran who takes a job keeping the lighthouse on an island just a short boat ride from Isabel’s small town. As with Isabel, it may be hard for some postmodern viewers to see the world through Tom’s eyes. He believes that, as a husband, his obligations to his wife are distinct from hers to him, and it colors everything about the way he relates to her, particularly when they’re tested by her inability to have a child.

One late-term miscarriage follows another, and as a despairing Isabel lies down on her babies’ graves, all clinical posturing that she’s mourning nonentities dissolve. Her grief makes her later decision to claim a foundling infant as her own more understandable.

A kind of Adam figure, Tom allows his affection for Isabel to overrule his good judgment with disastrous consequences. It’s clear his later sense of failure comes not from simplistic chivalry, but from an understanding that he failed in his role to lead his family. The movie travels through some tense, painful ground when the infant’s real mother is revealed, but through it all honors the sacredness of marriage with an honesty and rawness few films today manage.

That said, Cianfrance could have trimmed some of Tom and Isabel’s early courting scenes (including a wedding night sex scene that’s more awkward than titillating and accounts for the PG-13 rating), making more room for the ending: The film’s finale, while emotionally satisfying, feels rushed. I would have loved to see what a director with a more straightforward narrative style, like Steven Spielberg or Ridley Scott, might have done with the story. Cianfrance’s vision brings many lovely images to the table, but it’s not the kind of vision that will be as accessible to as many people.

Though it’s already being talked about as Oscar bait, The Light Between Oceans isn’t an issue-of-the-year film. It has nothing about banking crimes, church scandals, or LGBT rights. The moral questions and consequences it examines are ageless and its themes of forgiveness and faithfulness eternal. For that reason, there’s a good chance, despite its outstanding performances and lush camerawork, the Academy could slight it in the end. But it shouldn’t be slighted by audiences.