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Review by Frank Wilkins

Every once in a while, there comes a story with the classic virtues of fabulous storytelling and gripping character development. Like Sling Blade and The Legend of Bagger Vance before it, The Shipping News is about the story, the characters and the method of storytelling. One of the most challenging aspects of bringing a novel to the big screen is that of compressing the story down to the standard 120-minute time frame, yet still maintaining the integrity of the original story. Screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs has done a masterful job of converting Annie Proulx's novel, the The Shipping News, onto the big screen, introducing characters throughout the story, some as late as more than halfway through. I'm sure we've lost some of the original flourish of the author, but the screen version remains a powerful story nonetheless. Director Lasse Hallström (Cider House Rules, Chocolat) has a way of working with actors that garners their best performances, no matter the working conditions or storyline.

Quoyle (Kevin Spacey), who works at a newspaper as an ink setter, is a beaten man who was robbed of his self-esteem during his childhood by his father. Even upon his parents' suicide they manage to take another psychological jab at him from a phone answering machine message announcing their intentions to kill themselves. He sleepwalks through life with very little ambition and not even enough confidence to carry-on a simple conversation with a stranger. He falls in love with the town tramp, Petal (Cate Blanchette) and together they have a daughter, Bunny, played by triplets Alyssa, Kaitlyn, and Lauren Gainer. Quoyle is left to raise his daughter by himself as Petal leaves him for the more glamorous life of booze, bikers and fast cars.

Quoyle starts a new journey from the depth of his troubled soul and moves to the home of his ancestry in Newfoundland with his Aunt Agniss (Judi Dench) and his daughter. They move into the old family home, an abandoned, rickety, two-story clapboard house so precariously perched on the edge of the cliffs it's necessary to lash it down with cables. The Newfoundland countryside, with its craggy rock shoreline, snow-covered landscape and temperamental weather patterns, becomes a character in the story itself, stealing the lives of the town's inhabitants as matter of factly as car crashes.

In Newfoundland, Quoyle meets and falls in love with the town's day care provider Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore), herself a widow, and together they learn that they can share each others' needs and secrets as their relationship grows. As the story progresses, there is darkness around every corner as we learn more about Quoyle's family and the deep, dark secrets that haunt his soul. Quoyle takes a job at the local newspaper where we meet the movie's most colorful characters, each with his/her own dreams, visions and secrets. The performance of Pete Postalthwaite needs mentioning as Quoyle's boss at the newspaper.

Although, there is a deep and meaningful story about finding your place, dealing with your past, and learning how to cope with your losses, it never becomes tiresome and moves at a steady pace, leaving you wondering what is the next dark tragedy around the corner. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking, making you understand that the original settlers of this harsh landscape arrived by accident and those who stayed know that strange things can happen. We get a vision of how important the sea is to these people and that the sealife is a major influence on the culture of the Newfoundlanders.


Frank Wilkins

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