THE BALLAD OF JACK AND ROSE
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
IFC Films
Grade: B+
Directed by: Rebecca Miller
Written by: Rebecca Miller
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener, Paul
Dano, Ryan McDonald, Jena Malone, Jason Lee, Beau Bridges
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/14/05
Remember the story of the Japanese soldier who did not
realize World War 2 was over until 1972? In 1944, Lt. Hiroo
Onoda was sent by the Japanese army to the remote
Philippine island of Lubang. His mission was to conduct
guerrilla warfare during World War II. Unfortunately, he was
never officially told the war had ended; so for 29 years, Onoda
continued to live in the jungle, ready for when his country would
again need his services and information. Eating coconuts and
bananas and deftly evading searching parties he believed were
enemy scouts, Onoda hid in the jungle until he finally emerged
from the dark recesses of the island on March 19, 1972.
The titled Jack of Rebecca Miller's "The Ballad of Jack and
Rose," is American, not Japanese, and though he did not hole
up in a jungle, he did hide from civilization. Like his Japanese
counterpart, he could not reconcile himself to the fact that his
mission was long over.
"Ballad," which exhibits the results of its principal character's
mission, is Rebecca Miller's third film. The daughter of
playwright Arthur Miller and wife of Daniel Day-Lewis is best
known for her "Personal Velocity," personal vignettes of three
women, and though the principal character this time around is
a man, a feminine point of view is apparent in the story.
The story centers on an unusual relationship between Jack
Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his sixteen-year-old daughter
Rose (Camilla Belle). Jack, who lives on an inheritance from
his father, had bought some land on an island off the East
Coast of the U.S. (actually filmed by Ellen Kuras in three
villages of Canada's Prince Edward Island). The land, as we
learn through Miller's insightful dialogue, was bought by Jack in
‘67 where it was used for a commune, but Jack and his
daughter are the only ones remaining on this isolated plot. The
home-schooled Rose is as sheltered as you can get, a young
woman that could have come from Night Shyamalan's "The
Village." Her love for her father, who is dying from a heart
disease, is so exclusive that she will tolerate no outsiders in the
cabin. When Jack–as an experiment–invites his lover
Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two sons Thaddius (Paul
Dano) and Rodney (Ryan McDonald) to live with him in the
cabin, Rose's life is thrown into turmoil.
Side roles are well cast. Beau Bridges takes on the role of a
builder, Marty Rance, who aims to develop housing in the land
adjacent to Jack's–which motivates Jack's destructive
retaliation against this whiff of modernity. Paul Dano is
Kathleen's son Thaddius, a sex machine whose exerts his
charms on a willing Rose. Ryan McDonald as Thaddius's half-
brother Rodney, not only looks like a young Jack Black but
provides much of the film's wit by talking like Mr. Black as well.
The unhealthy relationship between Jack and his too-loving
daughter rivets the attention and exposes the depth of Jack's
character. He's a control freak who had pulled the girl from
school when she was eleven, a guy whose demanding
character may well have been responsible for the desertion of
the entire commune. He is an unreconstructed hippie whose
ideals are so over-the-top that they prove to be dangerous to
those around him, and in fact the film, appropriately labeled a
"ballad," plays like a fable. Jack's role as a fellow who is too
extreme for the likes of the Sierra Club, has both destructive
and amusing contacts with the developer, a friendly George W.
Bush type, adding to the film's humor while nicely providing
more insight into Jack's extreme environmentalism.
Rated R. 112 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com
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