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 – Shame, Steve 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 Machina, The Other Danish Girl), and the director of one of my favorite movies of all-time (Derek Cianfrance – Blue Valentine, The 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.

The year is 1918, and Tom Sherbourne (Fassbender) has earned a temporary position as a lighthouse keeper on the island of Janus Rock, a fictitious remote island off the eastern coast of Australia. The island is composed of both grassy knolls and rocks. In addition to the lighthouse are a small house and a little barn where they can raise animals. Tom, a veteran of World War I, is seeking a new start. Janus Rock is visited just a handful of times each year by Harry (Benedict Hardie – The Water Diviner), the shopkeeper. He brings grocery orders, supplies, and mail while making sure that the lighthouse owner remains sane. The previous owner had an accident, thought to be due to the isolation he exhibited on the island. Harry is tentative to hire Tom because no one in this particular position has ever not had been married before. Tom assures him that he’ll be fine, saying that he’s looking forward to the solitude that the job has to offer.

Isabel (Vikander) is on the mainland, and it doesn’t take more than about five seconds to realize that something will be happening between them. Still a very traditional life, Isabel cannot come to the island unless she is married to the lighthouse’s keeper. So, of course, they get married…but not right away. We see them writing letters to each other, and when Tom gets called back to the mainland and is offered the job full time, he takes Isabel up on her offer to wed him. What ensues is very beautiful as they do create a life with one another. They have dreams of a big family (let’s be honest, there isn’t much else to do on an abandoned island in 1918), but tragedy ensues as Isabel suffers multiple miscarriages. But then, one day, a baby arrives on a skiff with a man who has been killed. The couple decides to keep the baby and bury the man in an unmarked grave. Everyone on the mainland is aware that Isabel was pregnant, but no one knows she suffered a second miscarriage. If they kept the baby as their own, no one would ever know.

Vikander won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar last year for her performance in The Other Danish Girl. Ex Machina really put her on the map, but people will always remember you for the movies you win your awards in. I actually think that her performance in The Light Between Oceans is the best leading actress performance I’ve seen so far this year. I think she held her own with the more veteran Fassbender and actually gave a better performance. However, I’ve seen some lists of who could be the candidates representing this category come awards season, and she’s not even close to the top 15. That could mean that this still has the potential to be a great year for lead actresses or that I am overvaluing her performance. But I thought she did a very excellent job of being extremely likable during parts of this film and extremely unlikeable at others. She does such a great job of allowing us to feel her pains, both physically and emotionally, that we can understand her reasons for wanting to keep the baby and raise it as her own. She’s desperately hopeless, and she cannot escape the constant reminders of her losses. The island does nothing to reassure her that she should feel differently.

As mentioned in the first paragraph, The Light Between Oceans was a terrific character study of how two different people might react when faced with the same ethical dilemma. Tom and Isabel are clearly in love and have the same desire to make a family, earn enough money on the island, and return one day to the mainland to raise their many children. When that plan doesn’t work out, the couple does what it can to move on. Clearly, they are struggling, though. When Lucy washes up on shore, Cianfrance did a fabulous job of getting to the root of the issue and clearly distinguishing between his two leads. Once it is determined the baby is safe, Tom instantly wants to signal the mainland. There is no hesitation in his decision. Equally rooted in what she wants is Isabel, who clarifies that she has no interest in letting the child go. She convinces herself that this baby was a gift for them and that they can raise her better than anyone else now that her father is dead.

Never does he think keeping the baby is wrong. Never does Tom think that keeping the baby is right. While she can live the next five years of her life carefree, Tom is constantly tormented by his decision, even though he knows that they would never have gotten caught. The guilt weighs heavily on his shoulders to the point where he can no longer go on living a lie, even though it means losing Lucy and possibly angering his wife forever. It is interesting to see this situation both bring them together and tear them apart.

I didn’t find it completely believable, and I’m not sure why it was even part of the story, was whether Lucy’s father’s death was in question. You have to consider that when a baby arrives on an abandoned boat perfectly healthy, but the man she was with was dead. Still, despite Isabel’s anger, and as much as I tried, I could find a reason to believe why she would ever have said Tom was responsible for the man’s murder. It made no sense to me. This wasn’t a twist. Instead, it was out of character and felt awkward. If she wanted to punish him for the rest of his life, she simply could have done so by agreeing to his plan.

At times, the menacing piano sounds often made the movie appear more like a thriller or even a horror flick. Though this was a heavy drama, the music felt too heavy to fit. This coupled with the fact that the background music was, at times, so loud that it overshadowed the voices, and you’ve got some improvements in the area of sound. But the issues with the sound were compensated for with sweeping images of a film that, I believe, was shot entirely on location. Fassbender and Vikander both talked about how the isolation of the shoot felt menacing to both of them at times.

All in all, I was a fan of this movie. As mentioned, this is the type of movie that attracts me the most these days. Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine is an absolute masterpiece (one of my top 25 of all-time), while The Place Beyond the Pines had such potential but ultimately failed to live up to its lofty expectations. Like his other two movies, The Light Between Oceans was character-driven, but this one was definitely simpler and softer in tone. It’s not for everyone, but if broken relationship movies are your thing, you can’t do wrong here. It builds up the relationship before tearing it down and leaves you wondering how it’ll end…though, to be honest, because of the actions of Isabel that I couldn’t buy into, you don’t care as much about the outcome as you should. Nonetheless, despite its clunkiness at times, it’s still a movie I’d recommend and one that I’ll probably watch one day again.

Plot 8.5/10
Character Development 8.5/10
Character Chemistry 8.5/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 7.5/10
Directing 7.5/10
Cinematography 10/10
Sound 7/10
Hook and Reel 7.5/10
Universal Relevance 9/10 (ethical dilemmas change us…for better or for worse)
84%