Unfortunately, the focus of the new film, Anemone, centers on actor Daniel Day-Lewis’s emergence from a retirement he declared after the release of Phantom Thread eight years ago. Because the celebrated actor has created indelible screen performances in movies such as There Will Be Blood (2007), Lincoln (2012), and more, a new work from Day-Lewis creates an out-sized load of expectation.
Sadly, Anemone can't stand up to the pressure of our justifiable expectations. Made in collaboration with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who directed and co-wrote the screenplay with his father, the movie puts a tortured soul at its core but never feels fully realized.
Early on, Ronan Day-Lewis relies on arty, sometimes over-composed shots of the woods where Day-Lewis’s Ray has been living for 20 years. A visit from his brother Jem (Sean Bean) disrupts Ray's hermetic existence. Embittered and boiling with unexpressed fury, Ray doesn’t welcome the reunion.
Ray, of course, is no Thoreau figure transposed to the wilds of Northern England. He finds no solace in nature or anything else. He has devoted his life to the shame-filled brooding that resulted from his service during The Troubles in Northern Ireland. When Ray picks up a hatchet, you fear what he might do with it.
Ray protects two secrets that explain his willed isolation. He's also never seen the son he abandoned when he took to the forest. That's plenty of dramatic fodder, but the material might have worked better as a play, a two-hander that needed no other characters beyond Ray and his brother.
Additional characters do, however, appear. Samuel Bottomley plays Brian, Ray’s son, a young man who has gone AWOL from the Army, and Samantha Morton, portrays Brian’s mother. Her hope is that Ray will return to help Brian straighten himself out, to fill in the blanks that Brian has lived with concerning his radically absent father.
Ray's slowly disclosed secrets prove insufficient to stave off the dullness that results from slow pacing and lingering images that encourage contemplation when there doesn’t seem to be much on which to dwell. A couple of surreal touches don't help, either.
Despite its small supporting cast, the movie remains Day-Lewis’s. His performance includes two spellbinding monologues.
Like just about everyone else on the planet, I’ve never felt anything less than admiration for Day-Lewis’s command of the screen. Even when Day-Lewis has his back to the camera, you feel Ray's foreboding presence.
So, yes, Day-Lewis still compels, but Anemone might not have been the best opportunity to once again display the mixture of talent, intelligence, and commitment that makes him so great.
