Daniel Day-Lewis is brilliant, as expected, in Ronan Day-Lewis’s bleak directorial debut
Any film starring Daniel Day-Lewis is a must-see, right? Well, yes, but be prepared for significant misery in this directorial debut from Day-Lewis’s son, Ronan. It’s a strong piece of work, but like the recently released Die My Love, it also veers dangerously close to admire-rather-than-like territory for yours truly. However, it rises above that level (just about) by having a stronger central narrative than Die My Love, and some splendid pseudo-Lynchian weirdness.
It isn’t entirely clear when the film is set, but based on vehicles and television sets, I’m guessing the mid-1990s. Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean play Ray and Jem Stoker, respectively; two British soldiers, with the former having disappeared to live off the grid in remote woodlands following a brutal posting in Ireland during the Troubles. Here, Ray lives in a cabin listening to the Shipping News, chopping wood, and fiddling with electrical equipment. He’s visited by Jem when his adopted son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), also in the army, finds himself in trouble. Jem and his wife, Nessa (Samantha Morton), believe a visit from Ray will help matters, since Ray is his biological father. However, Ray, who abandoned Nessa after she fell pregnant and has never met his son, is…
