Film review: ‘The Light Between Oceans’

It sounds insulting to say “The Light Between Oceans” is the film version of an L.L. Bean catalog but, in director Derek Cianfrance’s defense, it’s the motion picture of an exquisite L.L. Bean catalog. Sadly, the spectacular knitwear and fine maritime locations do little to cheer Tom (Michael Fassbender), a World War I vet who takes a temp job at a lighthouse.

The gig is on the island of Janus, which lies… somewhere (between oceans, presumably) that is never made explicit – at any rate, the movie was shot in Australia and New Zealand. On a trip ashore Tom spies Isabel (Alicia Vikander), a young woman chasing waves and throwing bread at seagulls.

They share some smoldering dialogue about his life on the island: “What’s it like out there?” “Quiet.” After a little more flirtation – about how many people they know who died in WWI, etc. – they strike up a correspondence. Their letters are nakedly heartfelt and, not for the last time, the film takes on the peculiar flavor of a Nicholas Sparks adaptation. But, as there aren’t a whole lot of options available when your type is a near-mute lighthouse keeper with survivor’s guilt, Isabel and Tom are soon wed.

On Janus you learn disappointingly little about lighthouse maintenance but quite a lot about how Alicia Vikander looks feeding chickens at the magic hour. Though their early dialogue is rather stilted, the couple seems to stop speaking all together on the island, focused instead on posing for the invisible fashion photographers who frame their gorgeous period costumes against rustic backdrops of boats and goats.

Isabel’s life begins to unravel after a second miscarriage so she’s delighted to find an infant just moseying about on a rowboat the tide brings to the island. The child has a lens flare halo so Tom and Isabel just can’t bring themselves to tell the world the girl they name Lucy isn’t theirs.

Thus they learn that big life lesson: If you’re going to pass off a stranger’s baby as your own, do it in a bigger town. Soon the happy parents meet Hannah (Rachel Weisz), the bereft mother of child lost at sea who would be exactly Lucy’s age…

Tom is pretty great at lighting a lamp but he joins Nic Cage’s character in “Raising Arizona” in the annals of bad kidnappers… honestly, who would save the old rattle found in the rowboat with the baby you’re passing off as your own?

Just like Tom’s bumbling story to Hannah and the authorities, the film’s luxuriant visuals do not always cohere – Cianfrance often moves from atmospheric interior rack shots to long shots of the lighthouse that would feel more appropriate on a wall calendar. And Cianfrance, as viewers of his films “Blue Valentine” and “The Place Between the Pines” are well aware, wrenches every drop of emotion until the audience is exhausted as Michael Fassbender looks from the first scene.

In a misconceived third act worthy of the soap “Guiding Light,” there is much wailing, tearing of hair and rending of garments as Lucy is punted back and forth. Instead of the hypothesis that oceans are rising because of global warming, perhaps we must consider the high seas are due to the lamentations of Hannah and Isabel, the incredible volume of their tears.