The Lovely Bones sucks, made all the worse by HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

Posted by Daniel Metz

When I first saw the travesty that is The Lovely Bones, my reaction was one of confusion. Why on Earth did someone as respected as Peter Jackson feel compelled to make this movie? The story is lame, idiotic, and barely worthy of anyone but a lowly schlock-meister. Now, after having seen Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures, I understand. Someone handed Jackson the best-selling novel (that should be a clue of its worth right there), and he said, “Hey, this book is like my movie Heavenly Creatures. I can do this no problem.”

Unfortunately, The Lovely Bones was an abject failure, but thankfully this website doesn’t have to spend any more time discussing it. Heavenly Creatures is a fine little film, transgressive in its sexual politics and its dismissal of ageism so typical in so-called “coming of age” films. Here, we have two mid-teenage girls who fall in love with each other despite the class distinctions that divide them. They use their imaginations to escape all pressures around them.

Ah, to be young and repressing again!

The imagined land they establish for themselves is ultimately excused as a symptom of their shared madness; clearly, someone involved with the film was making a statement that homosexuality is viewed as an illness. Still, they relish in this madness and dance along with clay princes in some playfully striking scenes that reminded me of that dark Wizard of Oz sequel featuring “Twin Peaks’” Piper Laurie, Return to Oz.

I am fairly ignorant on the work of Peter Jackson. To date, I have seen only Braindead/Dead Alive, Forgotten Silver, The Frighteners, King Kong, and The Lovely Bones. Nevertheless, from my memory of these films I think I have determined that the excessive and discomforting close-up is his single directorial trademark. In this film, he lenses-in very close for some hyper-stylized scenes that were at times breathtaking, especially when the rotten-toothed psychiatrist says “Homosexuality” in a wicked whisper.

This is kind of a weird image, huh?

The film stars an eighteen year-old Kate Winslet and a sixteen year-old Melanie Lynskey. Kate Winslet is fine in my book. She is a beautiful woman (regardless of the tea-cup saucers) who has only become more beautiful with age. Her acting is fine and she chooses decent roles for the most part (let’s all forget about The Holiday starring Jack Black in a legitimate romantic role. I love Black as comic and as black comic, but a romantic lead he is not), and her child-acting here was decent if a little too mature.

My fan may recall how I wrote about Lynskey recently in my review for Up in the Air. She is a beautiful woman who brought Away We Go into a moment of fleeting greatness in the most tragic striptease in modern cinema history. I just looked over my review and I must recommend you read it; if for nothing else, there is a breathtaking photo of Vera Farmiga right in the middle.

Melanie Lynskey's great acting shows here on that wretched tv show

Seeing the two girls kiss in this film made me somewhat jealous. I wish, when I was a kid, I got to kiss Kate Winslet. Being that Titanic came out when I was 10, I am guessing that this is an epiphany that I am the last in my graduating class to have.

One last thing: New Zealanders sure do talk funny, don’t they?