You hear him before you see him. First, there are a child’s drawings of soldiers and conflict, Irish flags and burning pubs and bodies separated from their limbs. Then a pastoral landscape appears, a portrait of nature that would be idyllic were it not for the ominous gray skies. A not-so-distant storm is clearly brewing. There’s silence. And then there’s the sound of hard labor. We get a glimpse of a stooped, sinewy figure, his back to the camera. He appears to be pulling the roots of something from the stony ground — a gesture that will become far more symbolic as the story goes on. It quickly brings to mind another mysterious man seemingly at war with the earth itself. His face is obscured. Yet he still seems familiar.
Anemone, the debut feature from writer, artist and filmmaker Ronan Day-Lewis, will be heralded first and foremost as the return of Daniel Day-Lewis — Oscar-winner, screen-actor GOAT, the epitome of commitment to the craft — nearly a decade after announcing he was done with strutting and fretting across stages. (It premiered at the New York Film Festival today, and opens in theaters on Oct. 3rd.) You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, they say, and watching the elder Day-Lewis portray Ray Stoker, a former British soldier living in self-imposed exile, exemplifies why his absence from the movies has left the medium somewhat poorer. That particular alchemy, in which the mix of a certain performer and a camera create both a “moment” and something far beyond it, is already there in his first wordless appearances. You are reminded of why he’s regularly spoken of with admiration and awe, and why his reputation as one of the most compelling, chameleonic performers to ever do it is well-earned. (Not to be all greatest-hits clip-reel about it, but: These roles are being played by the same actor.)
Yet the urge to treat this incredible look at how legacies of pain reverberate through generations as just a showcase for the star’s formidable discipline and talent should be pushed aside, because that would be giving the movie itself short shrift. Anemone is as much an introduction to an artist as it is a reintroduction to an M.I.A. screen presence. And even when it edges toward the sort of arthouse-aesthethic territory that can inspire the rolling of eyes, this exploration of what lies in the silences between blood relations and the difficulty of moving past one’s own past tragedies makes you feel like you are watching something truly unique. It’s the work of a young filmmaker. But it’s also very much the work of a genuine filmmaker, bursting with creativity and refining their vision in real time. To quote another member of this cineaste’s clan: Attention must be paid.
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Attention, ironically enough, is the last thing Ray wants. He’s lived in self-sufficient solitude in the woods of Northern England for decades, tending to his psychic wounds. Stoic would be an understated way of describing his demeanor. He’s not geographically far from civilization, though he may as well be several thousand light years away, and you wonder how long it’s been since he’s spoken more than a few words aloud to another human being. Ray has not had any contact with his family in ages, but that’s about to change. His brother, Jem (Sean Bean), has helped raise Ray’s son, Brian (Samuel Bottomly), as if he were his own. He’s worried about his nephew, however, given that the young man is exhibiting the same volatility and propensity for violence as his AWOL father. Those bloodied scabs on Brian’s knuckles speak volumes.
This 20-year-old has, like his dad, joined the military. There was an altercation, and now Brian must suffer the consequences of his action. But the boy’s mother, Nessa (Samantha Morton), thinks that there may be a way to keep her son from completely losing his soul. It involves Ray. So, as in a fairy tale, Jem must venture deep into the woods and bring his long-estranged brother back into the fold. He has only the longitude and latitude of his kin’s location, nothing more. Some time later, Ray is tinkering away when he hears a noise outside his cabin. We see him pick up an axe, the camera framing a close-up on his hand steadied for battle. Then a clicker can be heard, tapping out some sort of code. Ray’s hand loosens its grip on the weapon. He knows who’s outside his door.
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It’s economic touches like that, how a simple unspoken gesture tells you everything, that make you feel like there’s a quietly dynamic storyteller behind the camera. Anemone has many of those restrained, pitch-perfect shots, which help balance out some of the more outré flourishes and hallucinogenic detours on display; a simple conversation between these combative siblings may give way to an image of a glowing angelic woman floating above Ray’s bed, or the appearance of a creature with an elongated neck, a human face, and a tiny penis. (It helps to know that Ronan is also a painter and a sculptor, and this enigmatic beast has a connection to his past work.) What starts off as kitchen-sink realism may suddenly morph into Lynchian hyper-realism, and Anemone‘s particular mix of a Samuel Beckett-like two-hander, a trauma drama, and a gallery piece exploring masculinity being a prison with many cellblocks risks alienating as many viewers as it impresses.
None of those aforementioned categories tend to drop in a showstopping anecdote involving an abuser, a confrontation, and the sudden expulsion of several curry-and-Guinness meals as a centerpiece, however. And trust us when we tell you that Daniel Day-Lewis’s rendition of this tale of scatological vengeance is, in and of itself, a masterclass in monologuing. It’s hilarious, horrifying, and plays like a symphony of equally profane suites. Both father and son share writing credits on the movie, and though the older Day-Lewis apparently improvised this recollection of epic defecation during their bull sessions — you might say it just exploded out of his subconsciousness like a geyser — it speaks to the collaboration that it still feels in character and in woozy sync with the movie as a whole. Ronan may have unleashed the kraken by letting his lead venture into such untamed terrain at will, yet he sets the film up to accommodate both silent expressions and wild, stratospheric swings. The central performance never eclipses the movie. It feels contained within something that can expand and contract as needed.
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We should note that the other cast members — y’know, the ones not named Daniel Day-Lewis — are equally on-point, with Sean Bean acting as both a ballast and an up-to-the-task sparring partner for his costar. As Ray’s beleagured wife, Samantha Morton once again proves that she’s an expert “six-inch performer” — as in, you simply put the lens six inches from her face, and she can deliver an entire stem-to-stern performance in a single close-up. You feel like you know this woman despite the little amount of screen time and even less dialogue she has. Bottomley gave depth to the resident shady-dude character in Molly Manning Walker’s harrowing 2023 coming-of-age film How to Have Sex, and he does the same with the closed-off young gent in danger of succumbing to the family curse.
And, naturally, you’re always aware that Ray is the character at the core of it all — the one who, like the flower that gives Anemone its title, closes his petals when a storm approaches. Day-Lewis’s go-for-broke take on this damaged man ensures that his troubles give the film its timebomb quality, and his parting look its state of grace. Even those who might ding this directorial debut for occasionally succumbing to the anxiety of influence will recognize what a feat it is. Forget, for a second, that this signals what may either be an extraordinary one-off for the legendary actor or the beginning of a fertile new chapter. Look it more as the product of two artists, generations apart, that have found a common patch of ground and grown something amazing out of it.