'The Lovely Bones' balances many dynamics in film adaptation

It was a matter of bridging two worlds.

Adapting the novel "The Lovely Bones," director Peter Jackson spliced together the work of author Alice Sebold and his own.
He chose what to show on screen and what to relegate to darkness outside the frame. And he balanced the real and the fantastical as main character Susie Salmon, from beyond the grave, pieces together the events of her own murder at age 14 while her family on Earth reacts to her death.

With a filmography that includes "The Lord of the Rings" series, "Heavenly Creatures" and "King Kong," Jackson again found himself thoroughly entrenched in fantasy with "The Lovely Bones." Over Christmas break, the Daily Nebraskan sat in on a conference call with the acclaimed director, who spoke on his style of filmmaking.

When asked about his fascination with the genre he's most associated with, Jackson invoked the name of a revered director of horror to explain his love for fantasy.

"Alfred Hitchcock said, ‘Some people's movies are slices of life: Mine are slices of cake,'" Jackson said. "I always make the movies that I'd want to watch. I like being swept away into a adventure that I know I'm never going to have in my real life, seeing and meeting characters that I'm never going to meet."

While the film draws on otherworldly elements, its crux is borne of a real-to-life threat, just down the block. Jackson said, above all, he made this movie for his daughter: partly as a testament of what could happen to anyone. He confined the most gratuitous parts of the plot to the space off-screen and focused the bulk of the movie on what occurs after the murder.

Hand-in-hand with the visuals, the sound plays on the subconscious with soundscapes composed by the renowned ambient music artist Brian Eno.

"You're sitting there in that seat in the cinema, and your ears are just picking up the cues that we're sending," Jackson said. "Sometimes, in very subtle ways, it's quite a potent whip the filmmaker has."

Stemming back to his efforts to create harmony between two or more sides, Jackson said working with actors can be especially trying, no matter the film. Each take is a gamble because the likelihood of each cast member hitting a high-point at the same time is very slim.

Most of all, though, Jackson sought to strike a balance between what is believable and what is not, trying to avoid any easy labeling and going beyond cliche.

"It's not a ghost movie," Jackson said. "Susie doesn't operate on the rules that you see in normal ghost movies. She can't make doors slam, and she can't do any harm to anybody. Yet, she wants to send the man who killed her to court because he's getting away with it.

"And so, it was a fascinating mixture of the two: stepping in and out of both of those points of view, the real and the fantastic."

arts@dailynebraskan.com