Daniel Day-Lewis is back! After an eight-year hiatus from acting, the master thespian has returned to the profession that won him three Oscars, in the psychological drama Anemone, directed by his son Ronan, and written by both Day-Lewises.
Co-starring Sean Bean and Samantha Morton, Anemone is a sparse, gloomy piece about a pair of middle aged brothers, Ray and Jem Stoker, both ex-military men who served during The Troubles in Ireland. Jem is a family man now living in a Northern England suburb, while Ray is a recluse who went into a self-imposed forest exile years ago. The film doles out information about these two characters and Jem's family very slowly and sparingly, forcing us for most of the first act to piece together how Ray and Jem came to be estranged. There is almost no dialogue in the opening fifteen minutes, and both actors convey palpable tension with uncomfortable glances and guarded body language.
We learn after a little while that Ray didn't just leave his brother behind, but that Jem's wife and son were originally Ray's family, and he abandoned them after being kicked out of the army in disgrace. The incident leading to his discharge has oppressively weighed him down ever since, all but entombing him in shame. Between that and years of physical and sexual abuse both brothers faced at the hands of their father and their Father (priest), Ray is, to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert, "a cauldron of resentment." But Jem has chosen to visit Ray in his forest hovel because Ray's son Brian, also a soldier, is in serious trouble with his superiors for nearly beating a fellow soldier to death in a fit of rage. Brian has never met his biological father but he's been taunted his whole life over Ray's alleged misdeeds, and he's inherited his father's self-destructive anger. The film is a rumination on the "sins of the father" trope, dealing with damaged adult children of bad parental figures.
While the narrative may not contain the most original concepts, what makes Anemone a fairly fascinating watch is how Ronan has executed the storytelling. Cinematographer Ben Fordesman creates a stunning, foreboding visual canvas, giving the desolate forest location an almost a mythic, fairy tale quality and making Ray seem like a savage ogre living in a hut. Drone and Steadicam shots respectively give us birds-eye treetop views and slowly push us uncomfortably close to the characters, and we alternately feel dwarfed by nature and by Ray's bottled up wrath.
Ronan does wear his cinematic influences on his sleeve. The opening shot depicts a child's drawing of The Troubles in mural form, calling to mind the opening shot of Ari Aster's Midsommar (Aster's collaborator Bobby Krlic even provides the score for this film, itself pulling from the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), and there's a scene where the camera pulls back through a wall of the cottage, leaving it transparent so we can see the action inside, a la Hereditary. A scene showing the two brothers swimming in the ocean is shot almost exactly like a similar scene in Daniel Day-Lewis's most famous film, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, and a later scene involving a hailstorm is shot almost exactly like another PTA classic Magnolia. Ronan hasn't found his own voice yet, but he'll get there. I look forward to seeing what he does next.
Somehow this film only landed a 53% RT rating, meaning roughly half the critics were too hard on it in my opinion. I feel like most of them were expecting another There Will Be Blood, which was simply unrealistic - "Daniel Day-Lewis is in it so it must be one of the best films of the 21st century!" Roger Ebert's website gave it 1.5 stars out of four, despite the review reading more like one Roger himself would've assigned 2.5. I actually agree with a lot of what that particular critic said, but not at all with her star rating; to me 1.5 stars signifies an incompetently made film, and Anemone most definitely isn't that.
Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean are excellent here; both actors, DDL especially, are incredibly adept at conveying a lifetime of buried pain with a facial expression. For DDL fans salivating at once again seeing the master at work, there's plenty here to fill that eight-year void. Samantha Morton does well with what she's given but her part is underwritten. Some of the dialogue is a little on-the-nose, but most of it works. The script does a lot of "telling" but not a lot of "showing;" Anemone would translate quite well to the stage actually. But for a 26-year-old making his directorial debut, Anemone is a very admirable effort. It certainly doesn't hurt to have one of the greatest actors in the world as your lead, but DDL isn't the film's only charm.
I give Anemone *** out of ****.
Anemone is currently streaming on Peacock (I had to turn on subtitles due to the thickness of the Northern England accents).
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