Anemone: Daniel Day-Lewis Returns to Acting in Son’s Beautiful, Beguiling Directorial Debut
By Liz Braun
Rating: A
The excitement over Daniel Day-Lewis’ return to acting is about to be superseded by an even greater excitement over his son’s filmmaking skills.
Ronan Day-Lewis makes an auspicious feature directorial debut with Anemone, an intense drama about fathers and sons that stars Day-Lewis Sr., who co-wrote, alongside Sean Bean and Samantha Morton.
It seems superfluous to write another word about the movie after listing those actors, but here we are.
The film is so visually sumptuous that it’s probably useful to know going in that Ronan Day-Lewis is a painter; to see what cinematographer Ben Fordesman does with light and shadow here suggests he was channelling Caravaggio throughout. It is gobsmacking.
The spectre of The Troubles hangs over the story, which concerns estranged brothers. The movie begins with childlike drawings of ‘70s-era armed conflict between Irish nationalists and British security forces.
Based on accents and song choices, Anemone is set sometime in the mid-1990s in Yorkshire. Jem (Bean) and Tessa (Morton) and adult son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) share a house in Sheffield.
There’s a family crisis. Jem sets off on his motorbike to visit Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) for the first time in 20 years. First, though, he has to find him — Ray lives as a recluse far in the north in an isolated cabin, with no electricity. An enormous storm is brewing as Jem makes his way to his brother’s hideaway, and you may be sure it materializes before the story is finished.
Once together, the brothers begin to talk and to unravel the trauma and violence that marked their youth. Their stint as soldiers was preceded by a childhood shattered by an uncaring father and by all the horror and brutality available in Catholic care homes. Jem clings to the rituals of religion to survive; Ray has simply opted out of human company in self-imposed exile.
They are so vulnerable. The sound and sight of Jem and Ray together — revisiting the past, thrashing out buried resentments, revealing their essential fragility — is very tough sledding, perhaps more so for male viewers.
Emotionally, it’s difficult; visually, it is breathtakingly beautiful. The brothers move quietly through the vast countryside, hunting for game or swimming in the ocean, but always rendered insignificant by the force and majesty of the landscape around them.
The sound of the wind in the trees and tall grasses is almost a separate character here.
Anemone is a redemptive tale, but slow and dark and haunting, sometimes slipping into fantasy and playing out like a fairytale, and sometimes unfolding like a Greek tragedy. As films go, it’s a triumph.
So: welcome Ronan Day-Lewis; welcome back Daniel Day-Lewis. No need to pass that torch, sir. You can both hold onto it.
Anemone. Directed by Ronan Day-Lewis, written by Ronan Day-Lewis and Daniel Day-Lewis. Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, and Samuel Bottomley. In theatres October 3.