The new film Anemone, now streaming on Netflix, was monumental for one reason: the return of Daniel Day-Lewis. <\/p>\n
And here I pause to list the greatest works of our greatest living thespian in an incantation to ward off bad movies: My Left Foot, Last of the Mohicans, There Will Be Blood, Lincoln, A Room with a View, Gangs of New York, Phantom Thread. <\/p>\n
We should note that Day-Lewis is famously an elusive chap unconcerned with the trappings of Hollywood; he retired in the late 1990s to become a cobbler (something no other person, living or dead, would\u2019ve done), and shuttered his career again after 2017\u2019s Phantom Thread, on an absolute high note. <\/p>\n
Anemone is directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, and they wrote the screenplay together. And here\u2019s where we hope Daniel keeps working so he can once again go out on a high note, because this ain\u2019t it.<\/p>\n
No one smiles in this movie, ever. Not that they\u2019re under any obligation, mind you. If you\u2019re not happy, don\u2019t pretend to be. But that\u2019s the best way to bullseye the tone of Anemone, which is about fathers, sons and brothers in Ireland, and how those fathers, sons and brothers in Ireland are all miserable. <\/p>\n
We meet Ray Stoker (Day-Lewis) as he chops wood outside a shack deep, deep in the woods. Next, we meet Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) as he prays, shirtless, so we can see the words ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME tattooed across his back and shoulders. Jem packs a bag and secures it to his motorcycle. His adult son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) sulks in his room, his knuckles raw and scabbed. Jem\u2019s wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) wears a sullen look, and we\u2019re not surprised by that. We soon learn that Brian is not Jem\u2019s biological son \u2013 that would be Ray. He left a pregnant Nessa and Jem stepped in to love and care for them. <\/p>\n
Ray lives alone, hunting and fishing, bathing in the river, using a generator to power a stereo that plays Black Sabbath\u2019s deeply sombre Spirit Caravan as he sits quietly by candlelight. Jem follows the coordinates to the sibling he hasn\u2019t seen in 20 years. He finds Ray in a state that\u2019s precisely what you\u2019d expect the disposition of an isolationist character played by Daniel Day-Lewis to be: off-the-charts cantankerous. <\/p>\n
Jem arrives and there are no hugs, no handshakes, no smiles, no words at all. Ray has one chair so Jem has to pull up a log to sit on. Ray prepares some dinner for them and as Jem bows his head for a silent grace, Ray shovels a big forkful into his maw. These men may be from the same parents, but they\u2019re very different now. <\/p>\n
At one point, Jem and Ray drink whiskey, put on music and dance in the cabin, and it\u2019s beautifully photographed, exquisitely lit and utterly joyless. Eventually, they\u2019ll trade fists and wrestle in the mud. This is what the movie would have us believe that Irish men living in a perpetual and vague misery do. They drink, they dance, they fight. And in this case, they\u2019re veterans of military conflict and other horrors that have clearly and obviously scarred them. But that\u2019s all Anemone makes clear and obvious, as the screenplay\u2019s desire to be mysterious, to sequester secrets within its foggy atmospherics, coupled with director Day-Lewis\u2019 lofty \u2013 dare I say amateurish? \u2013 artistic pretensions, inhibits our ability to fully connect with the characters on an emotional level. <\/p>\n
The film has a lot going for it: Ronan\u2019s painterly eye, Daniel\u2019s signature intensity and enthralling theatrics, a compulsion to address the repercussions of male pattern isolationism. The pieces fit together to form a nebulous fog, though, and an apparent desire to buck narrative convention and challenge the audience renders it nearly impenetrable as the film trudges from one maudlin scene to the next. Daniel\u2019s charisma is never in question, and it\u2019d take serious fortitude not to be drawn into his long, overly actorly monologues, delivered until his face is impressively beet-red. <\/p>\n
But those highwire soliloquies are the only moments when Anemone truly connects. The rest of the cast stares sullenly past the camera, or in Bean\u2019s case, sits sternly as he allows Daniel to consume all the energy in the dimly lit room. <\/p>\n
Ronan indulges moments of heavy-handed surreal imagery \u2013 an impossible pink sunset, the corpse of a large and rather bizarre fish-creature floating down the stream \u2013 begging us to interpret the heavy-handed and overwrought symbolism. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s more confounding than provocative, a collection of transparently orchestrated overtures calculated for maximum profundity and provocation. Yet we remain unmoved. This movie is grossly underwritten, save for the moments when it\u2019s overwritten within an inch of its life.<\/p>\n
Our call: A disappointing return for one of the all-time greats. .<\/p>\n
This story originally appeared on Decider<\/a> and is republished here with permission. <\/p>\n