Day-Lewis father and son create a beautifully shot bore
Anemone is the directorial debut from Ronan Day-Lewis, son of Daniel Day-Lewis. Both father and son have writing credits on the film, and not coincidentally the film is about a father coming to terms with his past and a son reckoning with his father’s elusive wartime legacy. Ronan, 27, has some prior cinematography credits, and demonstrates a promising grasp of visual staging. However, Anemone asks too much from the audience. Extracting themes and identifying Greek mythological references are welcome forms of audience participation, but Anemone implores the viewer to not only guess narrative context, but then puzzle it together. Lacking a coherent script, Anemone feels underbaked. The film is a style-over-substance exercise in nepo-baby reasoning unfurling at a glacial pace, barely held aloft by Daniel Day-Lewis’s noteworthy performance.
Anemone follows Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) as he ventures into the Northern England wilderness to locate his hermit brother, Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), in order to bring him home to his son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), who is in trouble after an unseen violent encounter. Jem and Ray were active participants in the Troubles, and carry with them the scars and trauma of past transgressions. They both took steps they believed would keep Brian away from following in their footsteps; Ray abandoned his family and Jem stuck around to raise Brian.
Anemone is shot, scored, and performed beautifully. Unfortunately, there’s no semblance of a story strong enough to withstand the glacial pace, plodding vignettes, and metaphorically vacant surrealism. Ronan wanted ethereal beach shots, so he took his actors to the beach. Ronan wanted ocean shots, so he had the actors go in the ocean. Ronan wanted river shots, so he had the actors go in the river. Ronan wanted contemplative fire-lit shots, so he had the actors stare at each other besides a fire not once, but twice (one outdoor, one indoor). Ronan wanted some pretty nighttime lights, so he had his actors stroll slowly past an empty but fully-lit circus setup on a field. None of these locations or aesthetic choices are inherently bad, but the connective tissue –emotional and logistical– is missing. Anemone’s award-winning crew includes composer Bobby Krlic (Eddington), editor Nathan Nugent (On Becoming a Guinea Fowl; Room), and cinematographer Ben Fordesman (Saint Maud), so I wonder if Ronan and Daniel’s script, the weak link of the film, was prioritized in the editing room because of the father-son duo’s surname.
In many ways, Anemone may have been better as a stage play. Daniel Day-Lewis has two extended monologues, and the film is primarily an interior set two-hander between Jem and Ray, with the occasional cut back to a second occurring two-hander between Ray’s son, Brian, and Brian’s mother, Nessa (Samantha Morton). Daniel Day-Lewis once again melts into a character like no other actor can, and he commands the screen with pent up anger, sadness, and secret shame. What seems at the start to be a story of brothers reconnecting (and it still is, somewhat), ends up being a nearly two hour slog in which Jem watches Ray, waiting for answers, just like us.
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Anemone opens in select theaters on Friday, Oct. 3rd, with a wider release on Friday, Oct. 10th.
