"The Shipping News" moves at a glacial pace, thawing as gradually as its protagonist, a middle-aged loser who has been frozen in fear since his abusive childhood. This strangely hypnotic adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel chronicles his brooding journey toward self-recovery.
Although there are rays of hope, the melancholy drama takes on the characteristics of the story's chilly setting of Newfoundland, island of weathered faces and blustery skies. Director Lasse Hallstrom captures the landscape's stark, stormy beauty as well as its impact on its people.
Quoyle (Kevin Spacey), a hapless city boy, is a descendant of the pirates who first raided and then settled the Atlantic island. His ancestors' blood still burned in his battering father's veins and, though less brightly, in his own. Ultimately he will learn that he inherited strength and determination enough to rebuild his world.
The movie opens with a quick synopsis of Quoyle's résumé of underachievement, culminating in his current post as an inker with a daily newspaper in Upstate New York. He has accepted his uneventful routine, even wallowed in it, when the brazen, tarty Petal (Cate Blanchett) bursts into his life, and Quoyle is smitten by this man-eating hothouse flower. They are married, she becomes pregnant with a daughter, Bunny, and after the delivery, she takes up with a series of lovers.
When she is killed in a car accident, Quoyle and Bunny, now 6, are rescued by his flinty aunt Agnis Hamm (reliable Judi Dench), who drags them with her to Newfoundland, their ancestral home. The battered family house still perches above the sea cliffs, though surely it would have blown away had it not been anchored there by braids of thick, creaking cables.
Bunny's psychic talents, or maybe only her imagination, are fueled by the noises of the house settling in for the night. On stormy nights, the cables seem to moan in pain. And the place is haunted by the family's perverse past -- and, if Bunny is right, by a ghost and his white dog. Apparently psychic powers come with the territory, encouraged by the Zen rhythms of the fishing village of Killick-Claw.
Though his only newspaper experience involves the presses, Quoyle is hired to write a shipping column for the local newspaper. His quirky colleagues quickly hone his writing skills, such as they are, and with each article, Quoyle grows a little bit taller.
There's also love on the horizon -- a widowed schoolteacher, Wavey Prouse (Julianne Moore in a sweet performance). Initially they are drawn together by mutual loss, though their relationship becomes more complex and conflicted as their hesitant courtship progresses.
Moore and Spacey's affair doesn't throw off a lot of heat. That's okay, because they have been hurt before, and they have to trust before they can love. Blanchett, on the other hand, is as steamy as a sauna, and what a convincing witch she makes, too. She, along with Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn and Rhys Ifans as newspapermen, adds a splash of fun to the proceedings.
Spacey, with his plodding gait and apologetic air, doesn't bring Quoyle to life. He resuscitates him, teaches him to stand up straighter and look other people in the eye. It's a solid performance, if a stolid one, and the same can be said for the movie.
Hallstrom, who previously directed Oscar nominees "Chocolat" and "The Cider House Rules," has carved a niche for himself adapting small-town family dramas. He ably brings the communities to life, though this film has neither the tastiness of the one nor the bite of the other. For better or worse, it smells of salt air, squid burgers and fishing boats. It's worth seeing at the very least because it is so different from standard Hollywood fare.
Thanks to Kathie for sending me this article which appeared in the Washington Post on December 25, 2001.