The Worst Film Ever

Memorable, crazy movie

It is a performances centric movie

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Love tends to be a forever topic of human beings. This movie also is structured around it but has something unusual. It tells us a story based on a controversy over the relationship between love and sex. The main male character and the female, they have a romantic start which prompts them to be engaged further in a marriage. However, it is just the night when they were married and went on a honey moon trip near the beach and were about to have closer physical touch that their relationship finally ended up into a strangeness. It is the difference in ieas of love? Different attitudes toward love and sex? It is both. However, the end of story reminds us of patience that changes everything as the time passes by. If you do not want to regret that the man in the movie, you have to learn from his misfortunes. Never wait till the tears fulfill your eyes to take actions.

I love Saoirse Ronan as an actress. I go out of my way to view all her attempts to act. This films sadly was a poor showcase for acting talents she genuinely has in buckets.The script was terrible. Absolutely terrible. The editing was atrocious. Watching (or trying to) some scenes was just painful. I said the main scenes involving their attempt to have sex was a masterclass on how to make something that is crux to the film, into something that it was bloody painful to get through as a viewer. Those far too much chopped up scenes nearly had be turning off the film more than once. The only reason I kept going to view the rest of the film, honestly, was in hope of Saoirse Ronan resurrecting the film out of the rotten way it was put together.I have not read the book - but it's very easy to say it must be far, far better than this version that's made it to cinema screens. I didn't see any characters on screen that I liked. I just saw a bunch of stodgy characters that should have been much better portrayed. It's all a damn shame. Each of the actors involved in this film have separately produced great work in many other films. This film was not their finest work. Again, damn shame.It was an horrid film put together. The directer/editors/writers need to back to class to remind themselves how to do a more decent job. This film cannot be a showcase for many technically involved. I give it two starts for the wrapping up of the story at the end and for the efforts of the actors involved. They were seriously badly let down by others who gave them crap material to work with and then put it together just as bad. A crying shame. It could have been so much better.

Emily Watson's performance in this film is strong, she delivers the intensity and range of emotions that we have come to expect from her. The film itself however is lacking. The narrative is predictable and rather uneventful as sans for a few scenes at the beach it takes place entirely with the four walls of their previous home. This is 3/4 drama mixed with 1/4 romance. There is no real supernatural aspects or nods to sci-fi in this film other than the fact that the child is a ghost. He doesn't look like a ghost and is able to travel outside the home etc. This is really a film about love and loss.Currently divorced and estranged, a couple begins to fall in love again when they are reunited while clearing out their old home when their deceased 5 year old son appears and remains in the home. After seeking the advice of a psychic the husband is told that his son has unfinished business that needs resolving and that it is his job to discover just what this is and then help him move on. This of course presents a conflict of interest for him as a father because he cannot bear to lose him again. This is the gist of the film. It is slow-moving and emotionaly-chargedl.

Ian McEwan's screenplay for his own novel provides some fascinating examples of creative adaptation. For example, the novel ends with Edward remembering Florence walking away from him till she is out of his sight. In the corresponding scene in the film the newlyweds stand at opposite ends of the screen with a cluttered rowboat between them. They speak across the abyss. As the raging Edward lets Florence walk away, the camera withdraws until Edward is left alone on his side of the screen. But the boat also sinks out of sight, below the horizon. That is, his ship has sailed. The film adds a verbal/literary metaphor. More dramatically, McEwan alters the ending by fleshing out Florence's future and giving the couple a reunion that provides an emotional release - for the characters as well as the audience. Edward's closing remarks expand into an emotional scene that the screenplay adds to the novel. After a 50-year separation the erstwhile lovers independently fulfil their romantic pledges in the concert hall they ambitiously predicted. She plays the Mozart he could "sing;" he sits in C3. But more important than this literal realization, they finally find themselves in the same emotion, their love now tempered by regret. He weeps helplessly at the quintet's standing ovation. Tears stream down Florence's face, dramatizing the novel's remark that at every performance she ruefully remembered him. The novel closes on Edward's private remorse, his recognition that he ruined his life by his inaction when Florence walked away. They did love each other and perhaps could have resolved her sexual repression over time and with understanding. But Edward was always too quick to anger - as in his avenging the insult to his Jewish friend. Indeed the violent rage that worried Florence may have been a subconscious element in her attraction: it made him something like her short-fused father. A boat scene keeps the subtle possibility of his sexual abuse of her as a child, the tennis scene the father's rage over her perceived breach of his privacy. Edward chillingly raises a rock when he attacks Florence for not keeping her sexual oath. He throws it into the sea, but not until he has admitted the possibility of his violence against her. The careful graduation of the pebble sizes along the beach - possibly the novel's central metaphor - parallels the film's constant nuancing of emotions and their tacit expression. Sailors determine their location from the size of the stones. We navigate our lives according to the proportion we allow our emotions. The film's ending steps outside Edward's perspective to round out Florence's future. She married her quintet's cellist, who had long desired her and himself accused her of hiding her forcefulness under an apparent shyness. He overcame her rejection, married her and developed the sexual relationship signified by their consequent children. This Edward first learns when her daughter Chloe buys a Chuck Berry record for Florence's birthday. Her name and "bouncy and merry" description prove her lineage. Edward doesn't follow Chloe very far, opting again to withdraw from Florence. But he goes to see her perform at her quintet's final performance. While Edward retreated to his own musical taste, Florence retained her attachment to the music he introduced her to, even as she advanced her classical career. Their career successes similarly contrast. While her college musical group succeeded for 50 years (including the young violinist Florence imposed), Edward abandoned his passion for History and ended up managing a range of vinyl record shops (a pop culture version of history/anthropology). He remarried but had no children and remained broken by his rejection of Florence. They both may have started with Firsts at school, but in overcoming their respective emotional blocks Florence exceeded Edward. Usually an ending imposed in a screen adaptation simplifies or debases the original. The common motive is to provide the happier ending that the mass cinema audience is assumed to demand, more than the solitary reader. McEwan's addition here serves that purpose in heightening the emotional impact. But it remains wholly congruent with the intentions and effects of his own source. It deepens rather than softening the oiginal.