The Lovely Bones

Once again, a little late on the movies, but I thought I would go ahead and review this one as well.

First a best-selling novel plugged by Oprah, The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon, a 12-year girl who is brutally murdered at the hands of a serial killer living next door.  Upon her death, Susie enters into a realm referred to as ‘the in-between,’ where she is able to watching her family and friends cope with the reality of her disappearance, along with the police investigation surrounding her death, and the paranoia that plagues her captor.  As far as the acting went, Mark Walhberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci, are all seasoned performers who played their parts well, though it was Saoirse Ronan, the 15-year old actress who first appeared in Atonement, stealing the show in her starring role as Susie.  However, despite their valiant efforts, I felt like this story had been told before.

In 1944, C.S. Lewis published a short story entitled The Great Divorce based on a similar premise to The Lovely Bones.  In Lewis’ tale, the narrator finds himself riding on a bus with what he eventually learns are fellow ghosts traveling towards heaven.  Throughout the story, the characters accompanying him are engrossed in the unfortunate incidents, missed opportunities, destructive relationships that existed throughout their lives.  However, rather than choosing to get off the bus and enjoy the heaven that awaits them, the ghosts continue riding and reflecting on the events of the past.  Here Lewis was not portraying his beliefs on the afterlife, but was pointing out that our attachment to a broken world keeps us from enjoying all that God has to offer … Hell, for Lewis, is essentially those in rebellion getting the separation from God they desire. 

However, in The Lovely Bones, the inability to move beyond a life gone wrong is seen as virtue rather than vice.  Susie is not able to enter ‘heaven’ until she is able to assist in resolving all aspects of the tragedy of her life, including an incredibly strange resolution at the end.  Sadly, the movie points to a longing within a contemporary worldview to make sense of tragedy when there is no longer a God capable of redeeming the situation.  Susie must create her own redemption before moving on to something seemingly secondary to the here and now.  But, for the believer, though we are not to make light of the present, we are to recognize, in the words of Paul, that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”  The movie is a very muddled attempt at providing hope, and ultimately, in my humble opinion, falls flat.