Friday, 05/13/05

'Ballad of Jack and Rose' never blooms

Daniel Day-Lewis nails his role as a man with the courage of his convictions in The Ballad of Jack and Rose, directed and written by his wife, Rebecca Miller. If only he were playing a heroic character instead of a wealthy utopian who has isolated himself and his daughter. The fortitude he invests in the role becomes irritating, as does much of this film.

Miller, daughter of playwright Arthur Miller, is a talented filmmaker, but her talent comes in spurts. Of the three vignettes in her film Personal Velocity, one vignette and half of another worked. Ballad of Jack and Rose is also about half-right — the half that doesn't focus on Jack and Rose.

Miller opens the film by blasting Creedence Clearwater Revival's version of I Put a Spell on You over shots of fields of wildflowers and a sky lit by the sweet sunlight of a coastal afternoon. These cinematic flourishes intoxicate until the hangover of retrospect sets in, and you recognize the unhealthiness of the filial relationship this scene has celebrated.

Life on the East Coast island where they live seems idyllic for Jack (Day-Lewis) and Rose (Camilla Belle), at least at first. She plants flowers and collects kelp. He watches her with admiration. It's 1986, and they're the only ones left at a commune, complete with solar panels, that Jack, a Scotsman enamored by 1970s American counterculture, built using his father's fortune.

Jack has a bad heart, and his daughter, home-schooled and convinced by her father that they are the only two people who matter, tells him she will commit suicide after he dies. These revelations don't inspire much sympathy. They just make you want to get away from these people. Mom fled the island a long time ago. You can see her point.

Jack's only saving grace, despite Miller's insistence on his nobility, is his 11th-hour realization that his daughter might need exposure to the outside world. He brings his townie girlfriend (Catherine Keener) and her two sons. This interlude produces an effect Miller probably wasn't aiming for, which is highlighting, through the eyes of the newcomers, how freaky Jack and Rose truly are.

But scenes of this would-be blended family keep the film from being a washout.

Keener brings great vulnerability to her character, a Lee-jeaned faded beauty and career co-dependent. Her signature flintiness doesn't appear until a tense interaction with Kathleen's older son, Rodney (Ryan McDonald).

This mother-son relationship compels far more than the father-daughter component, which grows more symbiotic, and at times, ridiculous, as the film progresses. The Ballad of Kathleen and Rodney might have been the more intriguing movie.