Ballad of Jack and Rose
Writer-Director Rebecca Miller has created a lush and sensual drama with her Ballad of Jack and Rose, but one that ultimately lacks clarity.
Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a utopian who lives apart from society on “an island off the east coast of the US” with his daughter Rose (Camilla Belle). He had once run a commune there, but his residents abandoned it long ago. Now he spends his days with Rose, farming and attending to household chores. They inhabit their own personal Eden, which Ellen Kuras’s cinematography captures beautifully. When they are not performing their duties, they are lying in the grass, deciphering cloud shapes and staring a little too deeply into each other’s eyes. It is immediately apparent that they play by their own rules.
Everything would be perfect if time did not exist, but it does. Jack is slowing receding to a grave’s vanishing point from heart disease and developers are encroaching upon his island. He is realizing that no matter how many pot shots he takes at them, he cannot “stop the future.” Rose is no longer a girl and she is starting to look at Jack in a way that makes both him and the viewer uncomfortable. Aware that his time for this world isn’t long, he invites his girlfriend, Kathleen (Catherine Keener), and her two boys to come live with Rose and him as a way of introducing Rose to society.
Upon realizing the nature of Jack and Kathleen’s relationship, Rose becomes more than just a little mad: she fires a gun at Kathleen. After she spies them in bed together, she decides she must lose her virginity, immediately. She first tries to force herself upon Rodney (Ryan McDonald), Kathleen’s articulate and sensitive son, who refuses to change his orange jacket, which he wears as a buffer against the world. He describes Rose’s solicitation as a “tragic, no ridiculous” situation, since he is gay. She then moves on to Thaddius (Paul Dano), the more disturbed and aggressive son, who will eventually deflower her in an act that is heartless and rough on both sides. Afterward she hangs the blood stained sheet out to dry to catch her dad in a plot that would make Iago proud. Jack’s hurt culminates in a violent fracture of Thaddius’s bones and the sub-Brady family unit.
The acting in the film is A level. The actors are superb with their roles and not one of them fails to respond in his or her personal way to the pain and disorder of “the experiment.” Rodney’s rejoinders are invaluable for they provide desperately needed comic relief in an otherwise completely devastating melodrama. Unfortunately, while the acting is strong, Miller’s direction is muddled.
The film’s clearest theme is the concept of community: personal values and social compromise. Jack has his world. Kathleen has hers, and so does the developer, Marty Rance (Beau Bridges). Connections are collisions, disintegrations. Jack is vexed when he realizes that Marty is not an evil villain. Their encounter makes Jack’s whole worldview and the life he has lived according to it suspect. Sitting at Marty’s breakfast table, drinking coffee out of a saucer, because he is dangerously different, Jack realizes that he really isn’t too different, that their lives have parted because of taste, nothing ethically grander. Ideals are just pretty pictures, but they can have “dangerous consequences” though. Exhibit A: Rose. Yet, Miller is unresolved about this. Even though she cuts two years into the future to show that Rose has decided to live in a commune that appears to be working well, it is hard to say how damaged Rose is because of her upbringing.
Jack took Rose out of society when she was 11. Save Gray (Jason Lee), the young man who brings her flowers to plant, Rose appears to have had no contact with anyone since. Rose has become a woman when the film starts and Jack is the only person to whom she can direct her sexuality. At times, Jack seems innocent of this, but often he seems a witting partner. Indeed, the first song of the film, Credence Clearwater’s version of “I put a spell on you” sets a sexual mood that is later confirmed by Nina Simone’s version of the same song. Jack subjects Rose to a Pygmalion project from which it seems unlikely she can escape. We witness him sensuously rub her lips and later perhaps kiss them, something Miller makes uncertain with her editing. The oedipal relationship takes precedence in the film, yet Miller leaves it unresolved, a decision that seriously impairs the film and leaves the viewer a little queasy.
Miller is definitely an ambitious filmmaker. She took a lot upon herself with this movie, particularly her inclusion of the ballad form as a framing device. Ballads by definition tell a story through songs. The soundtrack, heavy with Bob Dylan, tells the basic story, voices Jack and Rose’s thoughts, and captures the feel of Jack’s world. However, it creates some problems by not harmonizing with the script. The two are sometimes at odds with each other, which explains a majority of the film’s lack of clarity.
Miller isn’t afraid to take risks, but she isn’t up to the challenges they present; this results in a film that has many powerful aspects, but just as many problems, forcing me to give it a C +.
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