Daniel Day-Lewis has appeared in just three films the past decade, most recently an Oscar-n o m i - n a t e d turn as an Irish thug in Martin Scorsese’s 2002 epic “Gangs of New York.” The discriminating thesp returns in award-winning form in “The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” an engaging, if somewhat overly dreamy elegy about innocence lost, written and directed by the star’s wife, Rebecca Miller (daughter of the late playwright Arthur Miller).
Set in the mid-1980s on a picturesque, unnamed island off the coast of the eastern U.S. (the film was shot on Canada’s Prince Edward Island), “Jack and Rose” tenderly imparts the story of a terminally-ill staunch idealist and his 16-year-old daughter living in isolation in an abandoned hippie commune. Young Rose (Camilla Belle) has been untouched by the trappings of modern life, and has evolved into an uninhibited beauty without emotional filters. She is undoubtedly the sun around which Jack’s dying world spins, but also the source of great internal conflict as it begins to dawn on him that their feelings for each other have crossed into forbidden territory.
Throughout the film, Miller dangles the prospect of unnatural love (though never follows through) which only amplifies the disharmony that arises when Jack invites his secret lover Kathleen (the always-great Catherine Keener) and her two misfit teen sons (Ryan McDonald and Paul Dano) to move into the compound. Rose’s reaction to the intrusion suggests a mental imbalance that calls Jack’s unorthodox parenting methods into serious question. The actors handle the volatile material deftly, especially Day- Lewis, who reaffirms his status as one the cinema’s most prodigious talents. (Rated R for language, sexual content and some drug material. Running time: 111 minutes.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 25, 2005. Read the original PDF.