Category Archives: The Light Between Oceans

The Light Between Oceans (2016)

The Light Between Oceans was a terribly flawed movie that is very likely to bore many, if not most, of its moviegoers. This was evidenced by the guy sitting behind me who was sawing logs for the entire second half. But I am a sucker for broken relationship movies caused by some sort of strife, and that’s exactly what I got here. The only thing I knew about this movie was that it was about a couple living on a small island while he managed a lighthouse and that they found a baby in a boat they took as their own after she suffered a series of miscarriages. I actually wish I had gone in knowing nothing about this movie at all. All I needed to know was that it was a heavy drama, that it featured one of my favorite actors (Michael Fassbender – ShameSteve Jobs), one of the next great actresses of our time who absolutely arrived on the scene with two massive performances in 2015 (Alicia Vikander – Ex MachinaThe Other Danish Girl), and the director of one of my favorite movies of all-time (Derek Cianfrance – Blue ValentineThe Place Beyond the Pines). That enough would have gotten me in the theater. And that is enough for me to give this a positive review despite a story that had much promise but had some uneven turns and ultimately led to characters making decisions that didn’t make a whole lot of sense. What I loved most about this movie (which will be the focus of this review) is how two different people can face the same ethical dilemma and how the decision can eat one person up so much that they almost can’t live with themselves. In contrast, the other person can continue living their life peacefully as if the decision they had to make was whether to have sausage or pepperoni on their pizza the night before.

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