The Sea

Well it was kinda complicated for me. It wasn't that good and u can find better movies easily. Ngl I've watched it cause of Bonnie Wright. If u have much time watch it.

It is difficult to believe that this is the first feature film directed by Stephen Brown (whoever he is, as nothing is recorded of him on IMDb). Brown shows unmistakable signs of being a master even though he is so new. At the beginning of his directorial career, he is already far ahead of so many directors who have been at it for years. Since it cannot be experience, it must be talent. The screenplay is written by John Banville, based on his own novel. Banville comes from County Wexford in Ireland, where this film was entirely set and shot on location on the Wexford coast, which is on the eastern side of Ireland, facing Wales across the Irish Sea. Indeed, it will surprise no one that it was made on the Wexford coast, considering the title of the film and that the sea is in a way the central character in the story. The lead in the film is played by the actor Ciaran Hinds. I wish I knew how to pronounce his Irish first name, but until corrected, I shall call him 'Kieran' when speaking. He has appeared in 91 films and is well known as a supporting actor. But here he gives a bravura performance in a lead role, finely judged, perfectly modulated, and shows what stuff he is really made of. He clearly always had it in him, and at last he got to prove it. Well done, Hinds! He is well supported by Sinead Cusack, Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell, and the dazzling Natascha McElhone, with a smile made of sunlight (and often shot in it). Cusack is filmed dying of cancer, and it takes a brave actress devoted to her craft to allow herself to look like that, and to speak wistful lines with ironical humour at the same time. Rampling, the master of the inscrutable, is, well you guessed it, inscrutable. Her last line in the film makes quite an impact, though before she spoke it, I had guessed. Sewell is called upon to play a rather flippant fellow, and has no trouble in doing so. A great deal of the film takes the form of flashbacks, and the child actors in the film are very good: Matthew Dillon plays Young Max (Hinds being old Max), and Missy Keating plays the girl twin, but I fear I am unsure of the name of the boy who plays the boy twin, as these two characters are not named on the IMDb cast list. The film and Hinds are haunted by the most bizarre and horrible tragedy, and an air of ravaging nostalgia is evoked brilliantly by the director. The main action of the film takes place after the death of his wife (Cusack), when Hinds revisits a seaside town on the Wexford coast, where he had had the memorable experiences of his youth, which shaped his entire life. We see these experiences and events in vivid flashbacks, and we come to understand fully why they have haunted Hinds for the rest of his life. The film is not a cheerful one, and anyone feeling depressed, or grieving, should probably not watch it. For those who can survive watching a film with a great deal of sadness in it, it is the equivalent of a major literary work, and of course it is derived from a novel scripted by the novelist himself, so it retains all of its high literary qualities, which are so well served by the director. It is certainly a high point in Irish cinema. I await the next work by Stephen Brown with great expectations. As for John Banville, he has been producing important work for the cinema for some time now. He did the excellent screenplay for THE LAST September (1999, see my review), for ALBERT NOBBS (2011), and for the excellent Irish TV series QUIRKE, based on his own novel (2014, see my forthcoming review). He has also worked with the talented Irish director Thaddeus O'Sullivan (writing SEASCAPE, 1994), who directed the amazing THE HEART OF ME (2002, see my review) as well as the superb series SINGLE-HANDED (2010, see my review). Those creative Irish can get up to things, and we had better keep on our eye on them. And now there is a new one, Stephen Brown, to watch out for.

Man Booker Prize-winning novels are too hard to adapt, and except for a few hits like Schindler's List (1993) and Life of Pi (2012), all adaptations are either dull or totally a mess. This tragic drama is one such non-electrifying film.

Max Morden (Ciarán Hinds) is an aged art historian who has come back to the seaside place where he used to spend his vacations as a child. He is currently grieving the loss of a loved one and is also hoping to find peace from a childhood incident which made him the way he is now. The story follows Morden's life as flashbacks of his time with his newfound friends, a twin siblings, flip flop between the episodes of present tense.

Hinds is the only aspect of the film which is appealing. The supporting characters are too abrupt in their approach, making the film look like it was conceived for people who have already read the book. Even for those who have, the lackluster, non-linear screenplay will induce ennui, just enough to put them to sleep if they are not startled by the sudden, repetitive crescendos towards the end. Banville clearly fails as a scriptwriter, trying to correct some of his novel's mistakes by adding extra salt to the already salty water. Brown's direction is also at fault, as the cast often look puzzled in their own characters' skins. The young actor who plays a young Morden is terrible.

The Sea is an average book exploring loss and grief and how a man tries and miserably fails to fix up his life post the events. The film is a lot less convincing, mostly because the sliding sequences just do not bring about any point that the author might have originally tried to convey. Read the book and move on to Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss".

BOTTOM LINE: Stephen Brown's "The Sea" is a lowbrow adaptation of a lowbrow fiction which can be best understood by reading its original source. Wait for TV premiere.

Can be watched with a typical Indian family? NO

This film adaptation of John Banville's book by the same name, is irritatingly compelling and ultimately lacklustre in a really intriguingly enjoyable kind of way… that probably doesn't make sense right now, but by the end of the film you'll understand, or at least begin to understand – much like the plot of the film, which starts off slow but builds to a very pleasing climax.

Initially it's somewhat up and down - getting lost in its own narrative at times, with no clear intention of where the story's heading. Once we become invested in the characters they begin to reveal the humanity of the story which is a very emotional recounting of the glory of past life experiences, and the harrowing reality of the progression of life for our main character, Max Morden.

Beautiful warm and cold colour grades serve to separate the cheerful, innocent flashbacks from the much bleaker present day narrative. Every image and colour is used effectively to add to the story, and coupled with engaging performances from every actor present, this makes for a seamless viewing experience that's unique and enjoyable – although somewhat slow in its pacing at times. Where the film really struggles is in its efforts to manage the various narrative strands and how they play with each other. Unfortunately, it fails to uphold each strand all the time – sometimes leaving you wishing that the next flashback could come sooner, rather than later.

Simplicity is at the foundation of any creation, and it's from there you build on the layers to develop the project – "The Sea" skipped a few levels and tried to accomplish too much in its narrative at times, and while ultimately a simple, very well made film, it loses focus and dips too often to maintain the fantastic tone it sets for itself.

Max Morden (Ciaran Hinds) has lost his wife Anna (Sinead Cusack) to cancer, and tries to compensate by staying at a lonely hotel presided over by Miss Vavasour (Charlotte Rampling). During his childhood, he stayed there with his family, when the hotel was a large house with chalets attached; he stayed at the chalets, and befriended the family of a husband (Rufus Sewell), wife, two children and their "minder" Rose (Bonnie Wright). The older Max spends much of his time recalling that period, while at the same time reliving his last days with Anna. He feels a terrible sense of loss: during his childhood he experienced the first pangs of love and death - feelings that were repeated when cancer claimed his wife. Photographed in atmospheric colors by John Conroy - bright for the childhood sequences, dark for the present-day moments involving the aging Max, THE SEA is a poignant meditation on the complexities of the past. However much Max might have wanted to change what happened, all he can do is to relive it in his mind; sometimes it has the habit of repeating itself (as seen, for instance, in the last exchanges he has with Anna before she passes away). Stephen Brown's narrative unfolds at a slow pace, with plenty of close-ups of the adult Max's tortured face as he tries - and fails - to cope with his loss. The three-leveled plot - childhood, Anna's death, and the adult Max in the hotel - seems a little complex at first, but resolves itself at the end when we discover the true identity of Miss Vavasour and the mysterious pseudo-military man Blunden (Karl Johnson), the only other guest staying at the hotel. Some of the individual sequences are almost achingly poignant, especially the moment where Max lies on the beach next to the seashore in a vain attempt to commit suicide. Shot on a low budget, with a screenplay by John Banville (from his own novel), THE SEA offers a convincing insight into the mind of a tortured soul.