THE STORY – A former soldier reunites with his brother after living in isolation in the woods of Northern England for 20 years.
THE CAST – Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton & Samuel Bottomley
THE TEAM – Ronan Day-Lewis (Director/Writer) & Daniel Day-Lewis (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 125 Minutes
The sky is dark and the winds are strong. A storm is brewing, and not just on the Northern English coast, but in brothers Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis, returning to the screen for the first time since 2017’s “Phantom Thread“) and Jem (Sean Bean). Years ago, Ray left civilization to live on his own in a remote cabin in the woods. He abandoned his wife, Nessa (Samantha Morton), and son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), leaving Jem to pick up the pieces. Now, Brian is in trouble after having nearly beaten another boy to death, and Nessa has sent Jem to find Ray and get him to at least talk to the boy. As the primordial forces of nature around them grow ever stronger, Ray and Jem have a reckoning. Secrets will be shared and recriminations made, but will Jem be able to break through and convince Ray to come back to the world to help his son?
Ronan Day-Lewis’s debut feature, “Anemone,” presents this meeting of brothers as an almost elemental battle with the two men’s souls hanging in the balance. From the beginning, the film has an atmosphere that approaches the mystical, with hypnotic scenes of nature in turmoil – rumbling thunder emanating from thick clouds, waves crashing onto the shore, and tree branches swaying perilously in the steadily increasing winds – and expressionistic, dreamlike images that seem to haunt Ray. Bobby Krlic’s score perfectly complements these images, as gently plucked guitars build in intensity until they become electronic drones thrumming with atmospheric menace. All this cosmic sturm und drang over one man abandoning his boy can feel overly grandiose, but Day-Lewis has such a strong vision and executes it with such confidence and prowess that it works. The film truly feels like an impending apocalypse, with the dark gray-blue color grading of Ben Fordesman’s cinematography and the forceful sound mix lending great metaphysical weight to Ray and Jem’s every breath, while also giving the film a sense of urgency that keeps you hanging on every word.
While the film’s opening act is tantalizingly dialogue-free, once the words start, there’s no stopping them. The Day-Lewis men collaborated on the screenplay, and their dialogue crackles with electricity. The film is centered around two big monologues for Ray, one near the beginning and one near the end, that reveal everything about him and his journey. The first playfully morphs from a dark tale of revenge to a surprisingly vulgar joke, while the second is an emotional tour de force about Ray’s trauma from his service during The Troubles. The film’s spine is a third monologue, the letter that Nessa writes to Ray explaining what’s going on with Brian, although this one is cut into several chunks. It requires a lot of confidence to center so much of your debut film as a writer/director on extended speeches, but Father Day-Lewis’s intense process as an actor is reflected in the writing, which has an intensity rooted in deep, painful history for every character. Son Day-Lewis’s background as a painter and visual artist can be felt in the dialogue’s evocative imagery. This background is likely why he proves to be a natural at matching the film’s aesthetics perfectly to the tone of the writing. That combination elevates the film to a place of dark majesty, where the simplest utterance can feel profound and the slightest glance can carry the weight of the world.
Given the actors involved, that last bit shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Daniel Day-Lewis has long been cited as the greatest actor who ever lived, and his tremendous performance here will make you a believer if you somehow weren’t already. He does something akin to a magic trick, where you’re constantly aware that you are watching Day-Lewis give a performance, but he looks like he is living each and every moment for the first time. Ray’s reactions to some of the things Jem says surprise even him, and watching Day-Lewis seemingly discover the character at the same time as Ray himself does is a marvel. The range he shows in just one of his two showstopper monologues is more than some actors get in whole films, but he has two of them to work with, and there’s no other actor who can hold the screen so effortlessly. His every moment onscreen is electric, especially since he’s sharing the screen with two of the most potent scene partners an actor could ask for.
Bean has long been one of cinema’s most reliable strong-and-silent types. Only rarely has he gotten the opportunity to flex the muscles he does here, and he delivers. Jem’s wounded pride at having to get his brother to fix something he couldn’t hangs over the film like a fog, and Bean finds new shades of it in every scene. When Ray finally stops talking long enough for Jem to get a word in, Bean summons up all the righteous strength he can muster as Jem tries his hardest to convince Ray that he does have something to offer the family he hasn’t seen in years. The most surprising thing, though, is the tenderness he extends to Ray. The almost animalistic bond the brothers have usually leads to them locking horns, but it’s clear that Jem only wants to fight Ray if doing so means he’ll talk to Brian. It’s the actor’s most deeply affecting work, but the film’s most affecting performance might just be from Morton. The actress has always had a deeply emotive face, and she puts that to good use here, putting all of Nessa’s pent-up fears and anger into glances that cut straight to the heart. While she has less to work with than Bean and Day-Lewis, the fact that she effectively communicates Nessa’s entire history with both of them in such limited screentime speaks volumes about her abilities.
It’s only appropriate that a film written by a father and son, starring the father and directed by the son, would be focused on familial ties, especially those between men. Anyone looking for some sort of examination of the real-life relationship between father and son will be sorely disappointed, but that’s for the best. These characters have a deep, complex history all their own, and the performers bring them all to vivid life. Since the screenplay takes its time revealing the full extent of the family’s damage, the film does sag for a good stretch in the middle. But even then, the aesthetic keeps things feeling intriguing, and the actors generate such palpable tension between themselves that the film never bores. In fact, Day-Lewis’s aesthetic choices give the film a near-perfect blend of arthouse and mainstream storytelling sensibilities, always offering something beautiful to look at, even within the portentous dread that suffuses the film. On every level, “Anemone” defies expectations, announcing Ronan Day-Lewis as a visual force that can match his father’s high-performance level.
