If the movie had been truer to the book I would have given it 8/10, but as it is, it just makes being dead seem super cool and Jackson injects too much CGI into a story that just doesn't need it. Plus, do you really think it would be heaven to look down on your loved ones and see what they are REALLY doing? Their true faces? I don't think that seeing their sins, big and little, would be comforting at all. Mom what are you doing with that detective??? BLECH! (That's in the book not in the movie). The story is that of Susie, a 14 year old girl, destined to be forever 14 when she is raped and murdered by a neighbor in 1973. She floats around, looking at events below throughout the film, until she finally enters into heaven, conversing with her killer/rapist's other victims.
To understand this story, overall, you have to have read Alice Sebold's autobiographical work "Lucky". Sebold was raped at the age of 18 when she was still a virgin by a total stranger on the last day of her freshman year while walking to her dorm late at night at Syracuse University. The rapist was an African American who admitted to her during the ordeal that he had raped before, but for some reason thought that this kind of behavior constituted a date. Did I mention that he beat Alice to a pulp? Sebold came from an intellectual family. Her father was a renowned figure in academia on the subject of Spanish literature. Her mother was a cross between Susie's mother and Susie's grandmother. Mom had briefly been an alcoholic and had periods of raving (the grandmother), but Alice also always sensed that her mother rather resented the burden that the 1950's had put on her - society pushed women into the role of wife and mother (Susie's mother). Like Sebold, the character of Susie has one sister.
I'm telling you all of this to show you that this work appears to be another albeit fictional work in which Sebold tries to deal with her own rape back in 1981. Her liberal intellectual roots have her painting the rapist in this story as an ordinary seeming white man that fit well into middle class society, when in fact her own rapist was a black career criminal, a serial rapist of any vulnerable woman he came across when it suited his mood, and with a long rap sheet of violent crimes before he raped Sebold. But Sebold's intellectual liberal roots have her feeling some "white guilt" in "Lucky" even as she assists the prosecution with convicting this animal.
Another complicating factor is that Alice Sebold's rapist - never mentioned by his right name in "Lucky" even though we display the name AND picture of convicted rapists in newspapers everyday - probably arranged to have her closest friend and college roommate raped by a criminal associate two years after Sebold's rape in retaliation for his well earned maximum sentence. Since the roommate would not cooperate with police and threw Sebold out of her life afterwards, nobody can know for sure. But things that the roommate's rapist said, mentioning Alice and her routine, and insisting on raping the roommate on Alice's bed, suggests that is what happened. Imagine what these two traumas did to Alice Sebold? What they did was send her into a ten year tailspin of self destruction, at the end of which she discovered that she had PTSD, got treatment and is supposedly "cured". But how could anybody ever be cured of such traumas? Some have even said that Sebold is in fact Susie, dead, lingering between this world and the next - the girl she was before all of this violence looking for the life that she had before rape. It's an interesting thought.
If you read "Lucky" you realize that Sebold even has a hard time coming to terms with the rage and desire for vengeance she must have had for her rapist. This is illustrated in "The Lovely Bones" when Susie's killer is never arrested or convicted by the authorities, not even violently avenged by her father or some other caring friend or family member. Instead he is killed by a falling icicle in a freak accident. A most passive death for a horrible criminal. It is like Sebold is trying to say that God makes things right in the end, when to me, God appeared to be otherwise occupied during both Susie's and Sebold's ordeal. Maybe suffering and injustice mean nothing at all.
I'd say I moderately recommend this filmed version of Sebold's excellent literary work, but I highly recommend you read first "Lucky" and then "The Lovely Bones" to get the most out of it.
To understand this story, overall, you have to have read Alice Sebold's autobiographical work "Lucky". Sebold was raped at the age of 18 when she was still a virgin by a total stranger on the last day of her freshman year while walking to her dorm late at night at Syracuse University. The rapist was an African American who admitted to her during the ordeal that he had raped before, but for some reason thought that this kind of behavior constituted a date. Did I mention that he beat Alice to a pulp? Sebold came from an intellectual family. Her father was a renowned figure in academia on the subject of Spanish literature. Her mother was a cross between Susie's mother and Susie's grandmother. Mom had briefly been an alcoholic and had periods of raving (the grandmother), but Alice also always sensed that her mother rather resented the burden that the 1950's had put on her - society pushed women into the role of wife and mother (Susie's mother). Like Sebold, the character of Susie has one sister.
I'm telling you all of this to show you that this work appears to be another albeit fictional work in which Sebold tries to deal with her own rape back in 1981. Her liberal intellectual roots have her painting the rapist in this story as an ordinary seeming white man that fit well into middle class society, when in fact her own rapist was a black career criminal, a serial rapist of any vulnerable woman he came across when it suited his mood, and with a long rap sheet of violent crimes before he raped Sebold. But Sebold's intellectual liberal roots have her feeling some "white guilt" in "Lucky" even as she assists the prosecution with convicting this animal.
Another complicating factor is that Alice Sebold's rapist - never mentioned by his right name in "Lucky" even though we display the name AND picture of convicted rapists in newspapers everyday - probably arranged to have her closest friend and college roommate raped by a criminal associate two years after Sebold's rape in retaliation for his well earned maximum sentence. Since the roommate would not cooperate with police and threw Sebold out of her life afterwards, nobody can know for sure. But things that the roommate's rapist said, mentioning Alice and her routine, and insisting on raping the roommate on Alice's bed, suggests that is what happened. Imagine what these two traumas did to Alice Sebold? What they did was send her into a ten year tailspin of self destruction, at the end of which she discovered that she had PTSD, got treatment and is supposedly "cured". But how could anybody ever be cured of such traumas? Some have even said that Sebold is in fact Susie, dead, lingering between this world and the next - the girl she was before all of this violence looking for the life that she had before rape. It's an interesting thought.
If you read "Lucky" you realize that Sebold even has a hard time coming to terms with the rage and desire for vengeance she must have had for her rapist. This is illustrated in "The Lovely Bones" when Susie's killer is never arrested or convicted by the authorities, not even violently avenged by her father or some other caring friend or family member. Instead he is killed by a falling icicle in a freak accident. A most passive death for a horrible criminal. It is like Sebold is trying to say that God makes things right in the end, when to me, God appeared to be otherwise occupied during both Susie's and Sebold's ordeal. Maybe suffering and injustice mean nothing at all.
I'd say I moderately recommend this filmed version of Sebold's excellent literary work, but I highly recommend you read first "Lucky" and then "The Lovely Bones" to get the most out of it.