The best thing than can be said about Lasse
Hallström's The Shipping News is that it's considerably
less brow-beating than The Cider House Rules and
Chocolat. Robert Nelson Jacobs is loyal to E. Annie
Proulx's original text: Petal (Cate Blanchett) still can't
make an Alabama Slammer; hubbie Quoyle (Kevin
Spacey) is the poster child for the pussy-whipped; and closeted skeletons
are raring to cut loose. The film's first quarter is unwatchable as hell-fire
harpy Petal is transformed into a gum-smacking student of Marisa Tomei's
My Cousin Vinny ilk. Proulx's once-ghoulish witch takes the town by
slut-storm while the pathetic Quoyle stays home with their baby Bunny.
Spacey can do pathetic (however intentional) but Hallström's Quoyle is
nothing more than a child who confuses sex for love. Seemingly stripped of
Proulx's sad stoicism, Quoyle is now a mere victim to Hallström's
heavy-handed water imagery. Silly special-effects morphing give way to
egregious flashbacks that set up Quoyle's hydrophobia (his father was an
unconventional swimming instructor).
Petal goes to sleep with the angels, Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) comes to town and Quoyle decides to find his family roots in Newfoundland. Hallström is best when doing the quirk thing; there's a sweet-natured, matter-of-fact humanism to the film's oddball moments. Quoyle snags a job as a reporter at the local newspaper, The Gammy Bird, covering the shipping news. Ghoulish discoveries (a headless body, its rolling head) are played for laughs while the film's learning lessons are never ham-fisted. Hallström's characters are helpless and disconnected; all are in need of human contact though victims to a land that seems to portend only death. Hallström deftly free-floats between his stories: Quoyle moves up the occupational ladder; finds love with Wavey (Julianne Moore), mother of a mentally-challenged Harry Potter; and gets the lowdown on the Quoyle past via a creepy, blabbermouth uncle.
Agnis is a relatively loose cannon, a shining example of Hallström's awkward jitterbug between quirky and flat-out melodramatic. When skeletons fall out of their closets, explanatory flashbacks become difficult to swallow, shamelessly at odds with more humorous-minded coping rituals. Hallström's tonality is wildly uneven. The film works best when absurd (see the crazy drunk bitch scene), underachieving when it goes ghost-hunting (as a thriller, the film is all hot air). Hallström is an obvious visualist. Quoyle's computer screensaver is underwater-themed while car accidents turn into bloody Petal spottings; in effect, the humanity of Quoyle's accident column is flagrantly set up. The score and accents conjure images of Leprechauns searching for Enya and her Lucky Charms but Hallström's rendering of place and time is quaint and evocative even if the film, as a whole, moves at the speed of a glacial ice flow.
This article appeared on the Slant Magazine web site.