Review #37 | "The Light Between Oceans" (2016)

"The Light Between Oceans" is a captivating melodrama with all the charm of modest post WWI lifestyle. Isabel and Tom meet, fall in love, and live on a small island where Tom is the lighthouse keeper. Their love is inspiring, but the only setback hindering their happiness is their inability to have children. When a dingy with a dead man and a baby washes ashore, Isabel becomes attached to the child and Tom must grapple with the immoral decision of keeping the child to make Isabel happy, and the moral decision as light keeper to report the incident. Many twists and developments keep the audience on their toes until the end, as there are many ways that the story could end.

Michael Fassbender plays Tom opposite last year's Academy Award - Winning Best Supporting Actress Alicia Vikander. Fassbender and Vikander, a real-life couple, bring intimacy and passion to the screen, but they also realistically show the fun of their characters being a married couple as well as best friends. Most of the film takes place on their island in isolation, surely allowing Fassbender and Vikander to play the intimacies of that situation.

The plot moves forward with the introduction of Hannah Roennfeldt, played by Rachel Weisz, the biological mother of the baby Tom and Isabel "adopted." The addition of Weisz to the ensemble shakes the audience out of their vicarious sense of isolation and into reality, which ultimately becomes the very catalyst which brings the film's narrative to a close.

Along with engaging performances is the exceptional cinematography of Adam Arkapaw. Utilizing various camera techniques creates tension, hope, fear, anticipation, and other intentions when used in correlating circumstances. For instance, a handheld shot running behind Isabel and she sprints to the shore, searching for the source of a baby's cry, is so sudden and filled with urgency, the feelings and adrenaline rushing through her are palpable. For some, "The Light Between Oceans" has a way of surfacing emotion which has, perhaps, been buried. Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are decadent. This unique story, based on the novel by M.L. Stedman, gains life through the visualization of cinema.

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Rated PG-13. Runs 2 hours and 13 minutes.

Directed by Derek Cianfrance. Starring Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz.