Cast: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, Rachel Weisz, Florence Clery
Writer/Director: Derek Cianfrance
132 mins
Writer for the Screen and Director Derek Cianfrance follows his stunning earlier work "Blue Valentine" with a romantic melodrama “The Light Between Oceans”. It offers up the natural vicissitudes and tensions emanating from two people who fall in love – working on maintaining a romantic marriage with a major moral collision along the way. There is a masterful sweeping cinematic scale to this adaptation from the story by M.L. Stedman and one you’ll find it impossible not to shed tears over. Tom Sherborne (Michael Fassbender), stiffened and hardened by his time serving in the First World War and wondering if he’ll ever truly live again, takes on one of the most demanding solitary existences by accepting a job maintaining the lighthouse on the uninhabited island of Janus. Shortly before leaving however, a lovely, captivating woman, Isabel Graysmark (Alicia Vikander) melts his heart at a dinner party. Following a series of letters to one another they realise how much they have fallen in love – and subsequently they marry. Tragically, their idyll is shattered as their loving relationship is severely stalled by a miscarriage. Then, following an extended period of recovery, a truly heartbreaking sequence is shown as Isabel suffers a second miscarriage. A few days later as she mourns at the gravesides of their two lost babies, a ray of light is bestowed upon the pair when a rowing boat washes ashore. Inside is a dead man and his tiny, crying baby daughter. Isabel convinces Tom not to report it, thus allowing them the opportunity to raise the child as their own. The moral weight of this momentous decision increasingly piles on Tom and increases in pervasiveness when he finds a grieving woman at a cemetery monument - she is the dead man’s widow and the baby’s birth mother Hannah Roennfeldt (Rachel Weisz).
Cianfrance’s script explores the dismal, murky territory ventured into by the couple through their selfish but understandably human actions, as it bores a huge hole in your heart. The film is utterly unforgettable and beautifully haunting with emotions such as love, sadness, loneliness, betrayal and heartbreak hitting emotional depths and heights. Fassbender and Vikander offer wonderfully raw and vulnerable performances – full of palpable despair and anguish. The cinematography is absolutely breathtaking and beguiling as it fluidly follows the story with glowing warmth for the romantic sequences and a colder grey for the sadder sections. Unless you have a cynical heart of stone you’ll find it a challenge to emerge from this enormously immersive film without being forever affected.
Cast: Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J.K. Simmons, Cynthia Addai-Robinson
Director: Gavin O’Connor
128 mins
“The Accountant” deals with a subject matter which prides itself on accuracy and precision - and the film certainly doesn’t fail to entertain. The cast is excellent with a fine lead performance from Ben Affleck, a series of adrenaline-pumping action scenes, and some refreshingly character-driven moments of humour. However, the running-time is excessive and the narrative is at times confusing, not to say downright implausible. Affleck plays the titular accountant, Christian Wolff - although eventually we are told that's an alias with his real name failing to be revealed. Flashbacks are an irritating occurrence throughout, offering the information that our lad has a form of autism which impedes his social development – and results in quite spectacular outbursts should be unable to complete any duty or task. Despite this hindrance, he has what is termed a ‘supernatural’ ability when it comes to problem-solving. His father (ex-army) refuses special treatment for his son and instead ensures both ‘Christian’ and his brother develop to an inordinately high standard in martial arts and combat training. This is too much for his wife, the boys’ mother, who departs the chaps and the family home due to the stress of the whole situation. Now grown-up, our Christian runs an accountancy business with a permanently blank expression, delightfully manifested in a scene with a mature married couple as he comes up with a tax-avoidence scheme to save their farm, where he ends up in shooting practice as their thank-you to him.
Eventually though, it is revealed that his main income resource comes from functioning as a high-end financial fixer for a huge array of dodgy drug dealers, money laundering and large industry capitalists. Treasury agent Ray King (J.K. Simmons) gets wind of this and hires iffy analyst (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) in an effort to track down our mysterious accountant. Meantime whistleblower Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick) suspects some erratic figures-fiddling within a huge global corporation and decides to hire Christian to check out the bottom line and all before it. He duly arrives and immediately begins his forensic attack on a mountain of ledgers with hundreds of calculations across a series of walls and windows. "The Accountant" derives much of its unexpected humour from Christian's deadpan navigation throughout the film. Affleck is great in the lead role, as he repeatedly shifts effortlessly between reserve and lethal violence without missing a beat.
