The Light Between Oceans 2016

     This film is an adaptation of a M.L. Stedman novel.  Tom Sherbourne was in France during WWI and he feels very weary from what he saw.  He also feels a LOT of guilt that he lived and many others died.  He takes a temporary job as a lighthouse keeper but is offered the job permanently when the original keeper can’t return.  The location is the remote and isolated Janus Rock Lighthouse at Cape Campbell in Marlborough, New Zealand.  From the lighthouse top, two oceans can be seen at once.  It takes a special person to live with the lonesomeness for long stretches.  When he takes the job, Tom meets Isabel Graysmark and he learns she lost two brothers in the war.  She is the daughter of his boss and later they get married.  They want to have children but Isabel has two miscarriages in a span of three years.  She becomes very depressed until one day something very unusual happens.  A rowboat washes ashore and there is a man in the boat but he is dead.  The amazing thing is that there is a baby girl in the boat too.  She is fine and just very hungry.

      Be prepared for a real tearjerker of a movie!!  I watched half of this film and then I needed to look up how it turned out so I could watch without feeling too much drama.  Tom actually has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and this is before this condition had a name.  One personal item I learned from this film is that it’s more difficult to hold onto bitterness because you need to live with it and nurture it every day.  If you change your feelings into forgiveness, you can let it go and move forward with your life without looking back and remembering the bitterness.  When you hang on, the hurt and pain stay with you constantly without ever letting go.  There isn’t any way to change the past or other people and make it different.  4* (I really liked this movie)

133 min, Drama directed by Derek Cianfrance with Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Florence Clery, Jack Thompson, Thomas Unger, Jane Menelaus, Garry MacDonald, Anthony Hayes, Emily Barclay.

Note:  Imdb 7.2 out of 10, 59% critic 61% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 2 1/2*, Amazon 4.1* out of 5* with 325 reviews, Rolling Stone 2* out of 4*.

Special Note:  Filmed in Stanley, Tasmania, Australia; Marlborough, Otago, New Zealand.  The lighthouse is at the southern approach to Cook Strait and only accessible at low tide.  There can be high seas whipped up by storm force winds.  The swells can be 4 meters and the winds up to or more than 100km/h.  Many of the men in Stanley adopted the look of the 1920’s and grew beards as extras in filming.  Five actresses played the baby as she grew up.  A set of twins as the baby, another child as a one-year-old, one more child as a four-year-old and the last as an adult.  Fassbender and Vikander have been in a relationship since 2014.