THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE (DVD)

Director: Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity, screenwriting credit for Proof, some minor acting credits)
Starring: Daniel Day Lewis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener

I remember the day I finally got the Independent Film Channel. I was so happy I’d finally get to see more of the countering voices to the Hollywood din. After about a year I realized something, though. Much of the programming I was seeing on IFC was amateurish. Perhaps it was smart material, or at least the filmmakers making it appeared to be smart, but there definitely wasn’t as much wisdom in the works as I'd been hoping for.
I think we may be entering a real golden age for independent film in this country. It’s easier and cheaper than ever to produce a quality movie. With digitization we may find this even more so. For whatever reason, rather than letting young directors explore their own bounds the Independent film channel has seemed to focus solely on a style of story that often strikes me as somewhat unrewarding. I’ll call it the creative-writing-at-a-small-liberal-arts-school-of-filmmaking. I enjoy a lot of it, but I rarely get too excited by any of it. This film fits into that category like a hand into a glove.

Yes, the Ballad of Jack and Rose is an IFC production, and although I might be reading too much into that, this story definitely works with their “selling counter-culture” business model. Jack (Daniel Day Lewis) is an aging hippie, the last of his kind on a derelict commune on the seashore. His daughter Rose knows little of the world except what she’s learned in her isolation with her father. Sensing that the experimentations in their world may be reaching too far, Jack brings in his girlfriend (of sorts, played by Catherine Keener) and her two sons to live with them. Rose definitely needs another woman around. This is for sure.

In the end, and after some horrible symbolic imagery (an episode where a poisonous snake is let loose in the house for instance), this experiment is also a failure. Through it all Jack is fighting the construction of cheap suburban sprawl against his property. The telling line of the film comes with his final confrontation with the developer. Their differences all came down in the end, he says, to a matter of taste, not truth. Jack had isolated his daughter and raised her in potentially harmful situation because of his own snobbery. That may not be the full story, but it’s close enough to ring a few bells in his head.

As a story it’s nice enough. My faults lay with things like the overdone (and silly) use of imagery, and that there wasn’t a character in this film other than Daniel Day Lewis’ fine creation that felt even slightly real to me. These were parodies of people, or perhaps these were supposed to be characters in a parable. Either way, they didn’t greatly appeal to me. I'l admit that it’s a film that shows potential, although it just ain’t there yet. Wherever “there” may be.

Standouts: Nice enough basis to the story. Daniel Day Lewis is a terrific actor, almost always.
Blowouts: Silly moments in the script, unbelievable characters.

Grade: B-

1/26/2006