Peter Jackson
Amabili Resti

It may have happened to many of you, in recent months, to undertake frantic channel surfing to avoid hearing about murdered girls, killer families, and various deviations on television. Not out of insensitivity or indifference, but simply because at some point, even you must have voiced a loud "ENOUGH NOW". Afternoon shows, prime time, late night... pseudo-journalists posing as public prosecutors, fourth-rate commentators who think they are criminologists, Big Brother experts giving their opinions... and ENOUGH NOW. I'm sure you've all felt nausea, disgust, dismay, clearly realizing that the goal of all this is to keep as many people as possible glued to the TV. Someone once told me that if certain things are still broadcast, it's only because there's still someone watching them. Italians (not only) are a people of voyeurs; the stronger others' misfortunes, the more they comfort us and make us think about how lucky we are... underlying it all, from any angle you look at it, there is only selfishness.

I am convinced that the value of a literary or cinematic work should not be related to the particular moment in which it is "consumed"... I mean that a book, a film, a record, if they are valuable, they are always valuable, on any day of the year. However, I won’t hide that watching this "The Lovely Bones" at this moment, when all you hear about is missing girls or worse, is unfortunately almost "topical."

One can almost get another point of view, the one that none of those who make televised promotions at all hours has ever seemed to notice... the victim's point of view. Everyone was busy interviewing the nephew of the father-in-law of the baker's uncle of the poor victim in turn or building a model of the crime scene in a TV studio, but I believe few really understood the victim's point of view... people who are no longer here, people who had a life and should have had it, people who suffered but can no longer tell.

I admit I haven't read the book by Alice Sebold (they always say books are better than films), but I can say that if this film version of "The Lovely Bones" has a merit, it is precisely that it gives us the victim’s point of view.

It is the victim who narrates, already dead, what we are seeing; she is the only one who can do it, the only one who can lead the audience to know her (short) past, and the only one who can guide us through her anxieties that keep her in the in-between world until she finds the right tranquility to leave this world forever. Now it is she who watches what happens in that dimension that is no longer hers, and it is she who perhaps manages to interact with her loved ones to ensure her killer does not go unpunished. In short, it is her point of view.

Peter Jackson is someone accustomed to describing "middle-lands," but this is a different land. The limbo that Susie speaks to us from is a beautiful, colorful world, born from the same creativity that led her, in life, to want to photograph everything she liked... perhaps just as the director imagines it to be (he too is quite rich in creativity). But rationally, it is precisely this continuous lingering on fantastic landscapes and dream-like constructions that makes the film not very smooth, especially in the central part. We gape at this imaginary scenario and forget there's a serial killer on the loose... I can't really say if this is what the director intended (indeed, each of us imagines the afterlife as a place that puts us at peace with everything and everyone), but surely the narrative fabric appears almost severed, as if there is some sort of strain. In the "earthly" world remains a desperate family and a father who does not give up.

"The Lovely Bones" nonetheless has directorial and (especially) interpretative insights of an incredibly high level (the sequence of seduction/murder is objectively beautiful, shot without voyeuristic mannerism and with such delicacy that it makes it even more chilling), and it warrants viewing despite the narrative limitations I personally found. Stanley Tucci is simply amazing if only because he decided to play a role that many Hollywood pretty boys would have refused or wouldn’t have portrayed with such coldness.

Forget about those afternoon programs, and if you really want an "open" version for all of us of certain daily horrors, rely on those who at least can write and describe professionally... well, that's what I do.