"As if to make amends, there is a lighthouse on this island-Janus Rock, and the light beam she emits covers a radius of 30 nautical miles, for the ships passing by. Escort. Every night, she is there, spinning, making a continuous and steady hum, as if groaning in the air, fair, without prejudice, not blaming the rocks, nor afraid of the waves. She is there, fulfilling She was born to save her mission.”
This is the personified description of the most important scene in the story-Janus Rock in the 2012 best-selling novel "The Stranger Girl in the Lighthouse". British writer ML Stedman has created a fictional island located 100 miles off the west coast of Australia, at the intersection of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. April 27, 1926, was the day when the miracle in the work came. A wooden boat carrying a crying baby appeared in the telescope of Tom the Lighthouse Watcher.
In the adaptation of the film "Lights between the Oceans", the day when the miracle comes is perfectly presented by meticulously crafted images. Isabel, played by Alicia Vikander, knelt on the edge of the cliff, looking at a new cross made of driftwood, beneath which was buried her second child who had not been able to be born. The young girl who had not fulfilled her mother's dream had a solemn expression, like a desperate confession. Because of a love at first sight, she followed a supply ship that was only one month old to this deserted island where she could not see her lover up, but lost two unborn babies one after another. At this time, Tom, a veteran, played by Michael Fassbender, looked for a crying voice and raised his binoculars... "Ikky, there is a boat on the beach." In the boat, there is a man who was in distress and forgotten, and a group of crying baby girls-Lucy, like the God who owed the lighthouse couple for many years, finally gave them a gift.
However, is this a gift from heaven or an unknown disaster? The eager couple buried the martyred man, but where is the child's biological mother?
After the accidental appearance of the biological mother played by Rachel Weitz, the movie story, or the entire original novel about love, truth and secrets, developed into the dog-blood Korean drama model that we already know and mock. This kind of routine that has long been incompatible with our perception of reality, in the eyes of director Derek Sianfrans, is "a story of endless love, a compassion for white lies and hidden secrets exposed to the sun." As a dream-making tool, movies should allow things that seldom occur in reality, as well as our emotional logic that we are determined to be impossible, to brew and happen in the time and space of light and shadow. Think back to the director’s predecessor, "Outside the Pine Forest," a young man who had never had a life with his dead robber father. How could he be determined to find the righteous policeman and avenge his father? But its slow rhythm and unique atmosphere have been accepted and even sought after by fans.
With just two works ("Blue Valentine's Day", "Outside the Pine Forest"), Derek Sianfrans has established his own unique style. Contrary to his peers who align with American dramas in all aspects, he is stingy in using A lot of dialogue is used to promote the plot, and the real lens language is used to shape the atmosphere and develop the story. And when he filmed the first adaptation of the novel "Lights Between the Oceans", when trying to find and express some classicist aesthetics, his personal style in the past could be used more effectively. The scene where Isabel lost her first fetus, the stormy night sounded as the lighthouse struggling forward, like a Titian painting combining the dark reality and religious themes. In this respect, the British female director Andrea Arnold and Derek have similar temperaments. In 2011, also at the Venice Film Festival, she had two masterpieces of realism style, and instead dedicated her last literary adaptation work " "Wuthering Heights", don’t expect the director to give you an elegant Britain in literature. What the audience sees are the muddy pits outside the villa, the hills and mountains where the empty camera is freely galloping, the continuous rainstorm, and the cows trembling in the rain. Sheep, as well as the lizards, spirit sparrows, flying eagles, fish and insects that are dizzying after the rain and have nothing to do with the context of the story.
Derek is far from the extreme that Andrea has done, and more often he presents it to the audience with a panoramic view of the pleasing scenery. The location of this film was mainly taken from the Marlborough and Otago regions of New Zealand, and Tasmania, the outer island of Australia, also appeared in some beach scenes. Among them, the small town of Partaguese facing the small island in the novel is played by Dunedin on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island; and the Cape Campbell protruding on the north side pretends to be the lighthouse island of Janus in Western Australia in the novel. That lighthouse does exist, and it has been a veteran driver who has been serving ships to and from the Cook Strait for 146 years.
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