79 / The worst movie of the year
Yesterday we saw the worst movie of the year. Wait, what am I saying, the worst movie of the decade, no - wait again, the worst movie of the century; aw, shucks, the worst movie ever … The Lovely Bones.
We saw it against our better judgement, where we didn't like the trailer to begin with. But it was talked up in the media and by some critcis, so we went, much to our regret. It is a god-awful mess. Both tedious, over-long and truly unpleasant, unsatisfying while overblown and laden with ho-hum special CGI effects. The Lovely Bones is a very, very annoying movie.
Admittedly it is probably one of the hardest tasks to make a movie about child rape/murder. Peter Jackson is the wrong director for the job. He has used up all his credit he had with me since The Lord of the Ring.
I also admit that the second aspect addressed in the movie, the grieving process experienced by the family, generates some fine acting. That's where the one star* goes I give the film.
But the third aspect, the depiction of the after-life as told by the murdered girl, is so irritating, so maddening and grating, it defies description. 'Meaning' is laid on with a thick trowel - while altogether there is no 'meaning'.
A philosopher once commented that the query, 'What is the Meaning of Life?' once an attempt is made to express it in language, is meaningless.
Surely the attempt to picture the after-life in a movie is - while necessarily speculative - at best wondrous, if not comical, at worst ludicrous … but always meaningless.