Spoilers
Let me get this out of the way first: Forget the book. All comments made herein are with reference to the movie.
I could have seen Shipping News during Christmas holidays in Toronto in 2001, but somehow managed to miss it. I don't believe this movie ever came to town. It became a rather exciting event when the good wife spotted a HK$20 DVD over the weekend at HMV (and therefore definitely NOT a pirated version).
SN, I found, is a movie that I can watch with considerable detachment. Bizarre might have been too strong a word, but slightly out-of-the-ordinary treatment of some not-so-uncommon situations is just enough to stay audiences from empathising too closely and yet keep them intrigued. Example? A 12-year old girl raped by her older brother comes back after 50/60 years to steal his cremated remains to have the satisfaction of being able to urinate on them.
The characters in this movie remind me of Dicken's trademark caricatures, characters purposefully steered away from being multi-dimensional so as to draw out their unique eccentricities. We can almost see Quoyle as a Pip of sorts wading through his own array of versions, benevolent or otherwise, of Miss Havisham, Mr. Jaggers, Mr. Wemmick, Uncle Pumblechook etc. etc.
Also seen as one of the characters is the old family house, perched on a rocky precipice on the rugged coasts of Newfoundland. Houses playing an important part in a movie that come immediately to mind are the one constructed in Life as a House (2001) and the quaint little flat in the Korean gem Siworae (or Il Mare, 2000). Neither however features as prominently as the one in NS, heavy symbolism of the bloody history of the Quoyles. While we are on the Quoyle pirates, I note with particular interest that the manoeuvre of moving a lighthouse from one cliff to another to trick ships into smashing against the rocks has been used before, in a very watchable Japanese samurai/mystery Goyokin (Official Gold, 1969).
Hauntingly beautiful Newfoundland, beautifully shot, is one main attraction of SN. As one with the fortunate experience of walking outdoors (albeit very briefly) at forty degrees below (at which point Fahrenheit and Centigrade happen to converge) in a mining town, I found the scene of the biting snow enjoyable but not particularly stunning. The beauty of the ocean is also not unknown. However, putting these elements together does work wonders for SN.
Finally, journeying with Quoyle along his various nightmares does have great rewards, not only in the magnificent acting of Spacey himself, but also the rest of the excellent cast: Moore, Blanchett, Dench, Postelthwaite, Glenn, Ifans
.and, last but not least, the triplet Gainer sisters.
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