The Lost Daughter Lost Me

 

I’ll admit it. I truly have a grudge against multihyphenates. I’ve written about this before, but dang if it doesn’t keep coming up. So let me state it again: actors should act, writers should write, and directors should direct. It’s truly the rare person who can do more than one of these well, much less all three.

So let me use this movie to explain further. Our subject: Maggie Gyllenhaal, who assumes that she can not only act, but also write and direct (and produce). Thankfully, she doesn’t act in this movie, but her husband does (*sigh*). 

Here is the problem: actors are focused on the characters, and pretty much everything else fades into the background. Also, since we are just so swept up in the inner workings of the Actor on screen, we aren’t concerned about much else. And sometimes, we are expected to intuit what exactly is going on in that complicated mind of theirs. 

Here’s what’s supposed to happen. For example, if you are a screenwriter, you are supposed to convey the crux of the story in the first ten pages of script. The characters are supposed to be clearly defined, as is their motivation. In the first ten pages. I sat through half of this damn dreadful movie, and I still couldn’t tell you what the hell it was about.

The director, on the other hand, is supposed to fill in all the other things to give you clues about the movie. Great images, great sound… all those other things.

This was, as much of it as I watched, some woman sitting on a beach being annoying to others, and getting irritated by others. She gets enamored with another woman’s child, and inexplicably, she steals the poor girl’s doll. Sure, sure, there’s some nonsense about how the girl reminds her of her own daughter. And as much as I could glean of what it’s about, from what I watched was: Damn! Mothering is hard.

So let me save you a lot of time and effort: there is no story, no sustainable structure to the script. There is no direction whatsoever. There is nothing, actually, that makes this terrible movie worth sitting through.

Oh sure, we do have Olivia Colman as the lead (she is nearly always wonderful). But heck, if you like that, go watch The Crown again, or any number of things she’s been fantastic in recently. We also have Ed Harris, always a good actor, who may or may not play a romantic interest. And Peter Saarsgaard, Maggie’s hubby, is also in here somewhere. Normally, he’s a good actor, but I couldn’t even tell you who he played. 

What propels me to write this review though is that I was watching the Independent Spirit Awards this weekend (which I normally love). They normally mirror the Oscars pretty closely. Although they did change their rules recently, so that the films nominated had to be below a certain budget. That is the only reason I can think of that this happened:

Maggie Gyllenhaal, Best Director.  Maggie Gyllenhaal, Best Script. “The Lost Daughter,” Best Film. What the WHAT?

I can’t remember the last time I watched a film that caused me so deeply to want to throw things at the screen. Yet, here it is, sweeping all these awards. Blows my mind. There is truly, no joke, no structure to this film, no scope. Nothing happens. What does happen is insignificant, inconsequential and downright stupid. All the characters are unlikeable. 

Dreadful film. Don’t watch it.

Oh, but we also have, at the Oscars: three potential nominations: Olivia Colman, her younger self, Jessie Buckley, and yes, Best Adapted Screenplay.

It shouldn’t win any of those. It’s up against Dune for Screenplay. C’mon. Seriously.

Well, you’ve been warned.

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