Daniel Day-Lewis returns to the screen, but the drama is a drag.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie New
A rather limp and unremarkable take on strained fraternal/paternal relationships, “Anemone” marks the return to the screen of three-time Academy Award winner Daniel Day-Lewis since “The Phantom Thread” in 2017. Day-Lewis, the son of Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom C. Day-Lewis, co-wrote the screenplay with his son Ronan Day-Lewis, who also makes his feature film debut as the film’s director. Daniel Day-Lewis plays the hermit Ray Stoker, who lives in the deep woods of northern England in the late 1980s (the film was shot in Manchester and Chester). His estranged brother, Jem (played very well by Sean Bean), rides a motorcycle into the woods and hikes the rest of the way to see his brother after a long separation. He has been sent by Ray’s former wife, Nessa (an underused Samantha Morton), who, in another familial complication, has become Jem’s partner in Ray’s absence. Nessa sends Jem because Ray’s adolescent son Brian (a rather tiresome Samuel Bottomley) is misbehaving.
We hear rubbing, chopping. Brian’s knuckles are scraped to suggest that he has been in some sort of fight. Sporting a Fu Manchu mustache, sideburns and a salt-and-pepper crew cut, Ray is doing laundry outside his cabin, eating tinned fish, listening to Neil Young with his smoking generator running. Ray was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest when he was “little.” The priest has died. In a diabolical rant that I found phony, Ray tells Jem about a meeting he had with the priest as an adult during which he exacted revenge by taking a dump on the priest’s upturned face. It’s scatological to be sure, but not very convincing, and it soured me on what was to come.
Ray’s issues have to do with memories of his violent service in the British Army during The Troubles in Ireland in the mid-1970s, although Day-Lewis does not dwell on details. Ray and Jem both grew up in an abusive household in which their disciplinarian father was a physical abuser, although again, the screenplay is short on details. Jem has found solace in his Catholic faith, which jaundiced Ray mocks. Ray opens a bottle of whiskey. Soon, the brothers are dancing wildly together. Cathartic? Cliche? Some of us may be wishing that “Anemone” had gone all supernatural and had the bad father and rapist priest return to haunt the brothers as zombie-ghosts in their cabin in the woods.
It might have been an improvement on this by-the-book stroll down Eugene O’Neill lane. What more can you expect from the son of the daughter of “Death of a Salesman” playwright Arthur Miller, for crying out loud? Ray has planted the “anemones our father used to grow” in his cabin’s front yard, he tells Jem. Symbolic? Strangely touching? Morbid? Laughable? I think, yes, on all four.
Director Day-Lewis goes all meteorological at the end, giving us a biblical storm with baseball-sized hailstones. What, no frogs? Day-Lewis works way too hard to hit the ball out of the park with this first effort. Ray sees a giant, dead silver fish come sliding down the current of a swollen creek. How Fellini, I thought. The brothers fight and then get on the motorcycle to bring Ray back to Nessa, Brian, and whatever comes next. It surely won’t be happily ever after. Moody music is by Bobby Krlic, aka The Haxan Cloak (“Eddington”). The DNA that went into this film is certainly stupendous.
‘Anemone’
Rating: R profanity throughout
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton
Director: Ronan Day-Lewis
Writers: Daniel Day-Lewis, Ronan Day-Lewis
Running Time: 2 hours, 1 minute
Where to Watch: In theaters
Grade: B-
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