The Sea
(2013)Author John Banville adapts his own Man Booker Prize-winning novel for the screen, following an older man who – after the death of his wife – revisits the sea that holds many tranquil memories from his childhood.
-
Directed by Stephen Brown (feature debut)
Starring Ciarán Hinds, Sinéad Cusack, Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell, Natascha McElhone, Bonnie Wright
Written by John Banville (based on his own novel)
Flicks Review
BY Adam Fresco Flicks Writer
If slow-moving, arty-farty films reflecting on the human condition have you hurling obscenities at the screen, look away now because The Sea is all that and more. Max (a masterfully subtle portrayal by Ciarán Hinds), is an art historian who, following the death of his wife (a superb and deeply moving Sinéad Cusack), returns to the Irish coastal resort where he spent his childhood. Adapted from his novel by John Banville, the spare screenplay is masterfully served by director Stephen Brown, who quietly shapes a flashback-filled tale of a man haunted by a tragic past.... More
A melancholic meditation on memory and how events and experiences shape our present, tethering us to a past which we drag behind us as an ever heavier burden, this is a film that demands engagement. Deliberately slow and thoughtful, it’s a long and winding tale in which pacing, atmosphere and understated acting are all. Fortunately, the cast (including Charlotte Rampling, Natascha McElhone, and Rufus Sewell) are excellent, and the Wexford coast locations are emotively photographed by cinematographer John Conroy.
Slipping between past and present, musing on big topics of time, mortality, grief and memory, The Sea, depending on your arthouse cinema stance, is either wonderfully languid, self-indulgent torture, or just plain bloody torture. Me? I admired, rather than enjoyed, the quiet ambition, reveling in the atmosphere created, but never able to fully connect with those onscreen as anything more than cyphers rather than flesh and blood characters.Hide
The Peoples' Reviews
Your rating & review
Rate / Review this movieRate and/or review
The Sea
The Press Reviews
50%
of critics recommend.
Rotten Tomatoes Score. More reviews on Rotten Tomatoes
This story of a man who plunges into childhood memories in the aftermath of his wife’s death remains admirable but wingless. Full Review
A first-class cast make this an absorbing watch. Full Review
It’s impossible to escape the sense that Banville’s work is best experienced on paper. Full Review
A good, middlebrow adaptation... Full Review
The individual vignettes like the individual characters are left floating in the nothingness of a total storytelling void. Full Review
Care to comment?