Some things I liked some I did not.

People are voting emotionally.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

"The Ballad of Jack and Rose" is a subtle character based drama about a father and daughter living a rather bucolic lifestyle only for it to get shattered by three newbies who arrived on the scene. Sure the characters were well fleshed out, but that's what this film has to offer and nothing more. Sure these individuals lives have changed which was handled very well be writer/director Rebecca Miller. She brings life into these characters and gives them the liberation to flourish in their status quo.The story has a bit of a modernized version of The Garden of Eden along with snakes in both the figurative and literal sense. At most this film is just saturated with symbolism made famous by her playwright father Arthur Miller. Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) and is daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) have lived in solidarity in a commune on an island in the American East Coast. They live off the land resourcefully by organically growing their own food and utilize in providing their own electricity via windmills and don't rely on anyone outside their domain. The only non-resident who come by is a gardener named Gray (Jason Lee) who offers Rose flowers to plant, since being in her garden is where she spends most of her days. When news that Jack is dying from a heart condition, he fears that when dies Rose will likely soon follow. He then soon invites a middle-aged lady named Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two sons Rodney and Thaddius (Ryan McDonald and Paul Dano) to be house guests permanently. This surprises and unsettles Rose as she shifts her innocent ways and a swift turn on her father Jack.The balancing of this movie is to pave ways to certain components contrary to one another consumerism against idealism, sting in the past or moving on, making strides or staying putt. Miller succeeds in handling these issues unbiased. There are both good and bad sides to everything. Unfortunately,Jack's pro-stagnation beliefs can clearly and understandably be contrasted by Marty Rance's (Beau Bridges) pro-progression and the conflicts between them can be proven very inane at times. It is really forced down our throats that Jack is the protagonist and the worse thing is that Jack knows it.The aforementioned snake that causes the inevitable break-up between Jack and Kathleen which leads to her and her two sons to part ways leads to the return of Rose's back on happy terms again. Jack and Rose were okay before Kathleen and her sons came into their lives. Sex plays a pivotal role here as Jack and Kathleen take themselves to a place of consummate where they commit intercourse, instead of feeling warm inside, you feel the intensity burning in Rose's eyes as jealousy starts to manifest in her head. There's even a point where she becomes nearly homicidal as she tries to murder Kathleen or even her father. While this is happening, Rose feels that she herself could find a way to lose her virginity.Some people go through such great lengths to fit into those roles they even sacrifice their own bodies to make us feel sympathy for them. Daniel Day-Lewis did just that as when bare-chested he looks gaunt and semi-skeletal in appearance. Even though he's under his wife, Miller's direction, we know he can always muster in a great performance without being a slacker. Camilla Belle who is not a household name in Hollywood displays great acting which could feel like a breakthrough performance for her. Catherine Keener is great as always showing just how versatile she is as a performer.Sure the contrivances are quite frequent in "The Ballad of Jack and Rose", but it all gets concealed due to likable characters that we don't ever observe them. Sure the pace is slower than molasses, but it was done on purpose by Miller, can make fans feel very unsettled by it. I agree, it is losing a turtle race in its pacing, but this gives the characters ample time to develop and to make the audience become invested in them.

Rose lives all alone on an island with her ailing hippie father. She worships him and has incestuous feelings for him. He is still clinging to the dream that the island will remain a paradise away from the rigours of the modern world. However property developers are threatening to move in.It is refreshing to see a story of incest told from a female's perspective. However Rose remains unknowable throughout most of the movie - but then, in essence, so do the other characters, with vague and baffling dialogue. In the second half there are sudden developments that seem too convenient to do away with characters who leave the movie spread far too thin across the remaining characters and remaining runtime. The ending also seemed a bit too neat and tidy for the challenging issues the movie has raised.

Good actors and good acting were not enough to save this movie.The Fathers intentions to become an anarchist hippy and enter a family into it; his intentions to remove his daughter from school at the age of 11 and try to teach her what HE thought were important tools for life for her; his intentions to keep her isolated from wicked society to the point where she was socially and morally stunted; his intentions of springing a nearly moral-free girlfriend and her two boys upon her (when she wasn't even aware that he had one)not because he loved the woman but because he needed someone who'd take care of his daughter when he died (he was ill), were all good intentions. Unfortunately, they just were never effective and sound intentions.His expectations upon his young daughter were unrealistic and it forced her into taking negative actions/reactions, because she was so socially inept from isolation, and not nearly equipped to handle a situation of three complete strangers moving into their quiet and peaceful existence. They meet for the first time when she's moving in with her sons - I guess it never occurred to the woman either that more sound and moral steps should be taken?? Then to hop in the sack with each other nearly immediately after showing up, and when the kids were present, really showed the audience just how self-centered these two characters really were.They show that he doesn't even love the woman right when her character is introduced when he meets her at her place in town. He doesn't even say hello, yet he just grabs her and 'does his business on her'. Thankfully, he does offer a tad bit of conversation to her afterward. The second sign that shows the real status of this relationship is when he pays her a fat check to move in with him - and she accepted it!! I think it was quite apparent that she would've shacked up with him for free. The third sign, is when she tries to get an idea if he truly wants her there and if he's in love with her - and by his responses it's pretty clear that he likes her, he likes the act of sex, but he is in no way in love with her. Yes, of course, this woman with a high self esteem and moral base still moves in with him. Smart move, Mama.Then comes a barrage of issues after they move in. The real emotionally stunted and badly behaved children in this film are the two legal adults - Jack and the shack-me-up girlfriend. It's appalling how surprised and shocked they are when the kids start acting out. Duuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...........................OK, so situations are rectified, and lessons are FINALLY LEARNED, and he gives her a check for $15,000 to move out, but she wants $20,000 - fine. All is right with the world again. THEN!!! to make this snoooore of a movie even over-the-top worse, they just HAD to add a touch of incest between the Father and daughter, AND (wait, there is more!)to add salt to the wound, they even made it RECIPROCAL. Good job, fellas. Kudos. Yer terrific. The cake already fell. Please, don't bother to try to frost it at this late date. Just throw it in the trash (which is where this movie belongs).Don't waste your time watching this. You will regret being robbed of your precious 2 hours of life. If you insist on watching it, be sure to have plenty of tasks to do at hand so it's not a complete waste of time.

It's 1986. Jack is a superannuated hippy, still trying to live the good life on an island off the east coast of Canada. Rose is his sheltered daughter, teetering on the brink of sexual self discovery, and spending far too much time without the company of peers. They inhabit an old commune that Jack established and owns, but which everyone else has fled, leaving them constantly in each other's company. Now that Jack is dying of some vague heart ailment, and his daughter is threatening to die with him, he wants to bring in a substitute, a girl friend who will be part lover, part nurse-maid, and part belated mother to his daughter. Needless to say, his best laid plans go badly awry.Firstly I'd like to comment on the positives of this film. I thought the cinematography very good. Ellen Kuras delivers a beautiful portrait of the island, the ocean around it and the flower and fruit filled garden, which gives the viewer a keen sense of why these people might have wanted to spend so many years in virtual isolation here. She sets the scene for a symbolic Garden of Eden, pristine and lovely (I think they must have been lucky with the weather on this shoot!) with Rose as director Miller's Eve, which contrasts nicely with the all too down to earth, clay footed reality of the characters who inhabit it. The acting is good too. Daniel Day Lewis as Jack is a gaunt, dying, control freak who seems to age fifteen years in the course of the movie without any apparent assistance from the make-up department. Camilla Belle as Rose occasionally looks a little self conscious but is mostly believable – and I loved her clothes, I thought they captured her look just right. Living as I do near the long lost, hippy paradise of Santa Cruz, I've seen many Rose types, raised by earth mothers and self obsessed, aging, hippy fathers and they all dress like that, the long dress over the jeans, boots and long, split ended hair in desperate need of a trim. It was well observed.But even idealist Jack occasionally needs to escape from his pristine world where he's raising his adoring daughter, for some mainland bonking with girl friend Kathleen (Catherine Keener), and he rashly invites her to come live with him, bringing her two teenage sons and her mainland expectations. Money is involved so it's not exactly an act of loving altruism on either side. Rose is not consulted on this 'experiment', Jack seems to think the sheer force of his personality will make it work. I spent part of this movie wondering why all the original inhabitants of the commune - including Rose's mother - left. The answer is easy; Jack.The newcomers are expected to fit into his world and this was where I felt the movie was least believable. Jack seems like an intelligent man, did he really think they would all be sitting around the fire singing Kumbayaa? He has known this woman all of 4 months and barely knows the sons at all. Jack seems contemptuous of Kathleen's cooking and make-up. Hadn't he noticed before? The sons expect TV, and in the case of one, sex. Rose goes overnight from living alone in a borderline incestuous relationship with dad, baking pies and learning the Latin names of plants, to sharing a house with three strangers, and she is naturally just a little put out. She realizes dad and Kathleen are lovers and in retaliation for what she sees as his disloyalty, and in her jealousy of Kathleen, throws herself at the boys. Sweet Rodney (Ryan McDonald) is gay and politely declines, giving her a much needed haircut instead (almost as good, he observes ironically.) But skinny, devious Thaddius (Paul Dano - so good in Little Miss Sunshine) is all too ready to oblige. In the contretemp which follows the deflowering, during a retro party, Thaddius ends up being thrown from a window breaking several limbs.And what really sealed the fate of the movie for me, was that despite this near manslaughter of her son, mom Kathleen came back to Jack for more of the same. Only more money finally persuades her to leave for good, so that Rose can tend her father alone on his deathbed, and burn him and the house in a final act of heavy handed symbolism. Will she or will she not commit Suttee and burn with him? At the end of this movie I was left with absolutely no sympathy for any of the adults, but reflecting instead on the myriad different ways parents abuse their kids. My only real surprise is that kids end up as sane as they do. Jack and Kathleen deserve each other. He raises his daughter in some idealistic and isolated vision he has of the world, then dumps three total strangers on her as a surrogate family. Kathleen drags her sons away from their regular lives because a dying man who may or may not love her, has offered her money. I wouldn't describe either of them as engaging, sympathetic characters. I felt far more sympathy for the kids, and whilst we are shown a brief, and rather pat, coda of Rose moving on to a new life in a new commune, the fate of Rodney and Thaddius is apparently of no interest after this jarring episode in their young lives. Hopefully Rodney opens a salon in New York and becomes a millionaire. He's the only one with any sense of humor.The film is also tiringly slow in places, and had me occasionally glancing at my watch. I watched it on DVD at home; not entirely an evening wasted but a sharper script and more believable story line would have improved it immensely.