Dir: Ronan Day Lewis | US Drama 125’
Unlike the delicate flower of the title Anemone is a ponderous heavy-going ‘blokes in crisis’ movie that plods along for over two hours mostly set in a bosky backwater somewhere in north Wales.
It looks stylish enough with lush settings in the verdant countryside but the sententious score, played by Black Sabbath, lets us know that what follows will be taking itself very seriously indeed.
The story opens with a dour loner praying earnestly to God, his tattooed back to the audience. This is Ray a sweary, traumatised ex Northern Ireland veteran (played by Daniel Day Lewis who also co-wrote the script with debut director Ronan, his son). Sean Bean plays his brother Jem who soon appears having driven up to visit him in this lonely weather-beaten location.
As close as two hard-bitten Northerners can be they do butch things like chopping wood, glaring silently into the fire and wild water swimming. They are also very keen on vehemently quoting from the Bible and knocking back whisky with beared teeth. At one point Ray gives a lengthy monologue about having ‘revenge diarrhoea’ before the two of them do a wild dance to more sententious music.
Meanwhile, In another, even grimmer, urban location, Jem’s partner Nessa (Samantha Morton) is coping bravely, inured to keeping the home fires burning while having deep intense conversations with her son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), who is also working through the trauma of his own conflict.
Back in the North souls are bared and opinions aired with much swearing and self-righteous indignation by the two brothers, and all this with long intervals of silence and an ominous score. Anemone would work better as a stage play or on the radio.
Clearly this is Day-Lewis’ film and he holds forth relishing the chance to deliver his spirited soliloquies that once again place him as the coruscating central character. Bean’s Jem is rather back-footed as the ‘sad old bugger’ brother (his own words) on the receiving end of all the pent up bile.
The ending is an absurd surreal sequence of events that sees all this masculine angst boils over with with more taciturn glaring in the aftermath. @Meredith Taylor
ANEMONE IS IN UK CINEMAS