The Shipping News

Ordinarily I wouldn’t have watched this movie. It didn’t have any nail-biting chases, edge-of-the-seat mystery or out-of-this-world fictional plot which normally attracts me to a movie. Plus I don’t particularly like Kevin Spacey since he tried to kill my favorite superhero in the last installment of Superman. :-)

But it was late in the night and I was too tired to read a book. Nor did I feel sleepy enough to go to bed. So I grabbed the remote and was wading through late-night saas-bahu serials, myriad news channels all airing different versions of the same Breaking News and tele-shopping channels dishing out miraculous cure for obesity and hairloss – when I chanced upon a movie channel that was airing this one. I actually got on board in the middle of it and stayed right till the end.

It was partly the story and partly the scenery that kept me glued to my seat. As far as the story goes, Spacey plays a husband whose upto-no-good wife flees with her boyfriend after selling their only daughter to an illegal adoption agency. The cops manage to rescue the child but the mother and her boyfriend die when their car crashes in a river. Traumatized, Spacey returns to his family's ancestral home in a small fishing town.

As he tries to piece together his life he takes up a job at a local newspaper. Contrary to the editor’s suggestion that he write about oil tankers, he starts a column on shipping news. It is appreciated by readers and so naturally the owner of the newspaper appreciates it as well. As if to complement this success in his professional life he meets Julianne Moore – a widow with a child – who he gets along pretty well with. Still, during his stay he comes to know of many things about his ancestors which he otherwise wouldn’t have known – and not all of them are pleasant.

The movie marvellously brings out the beauty of the small seaside town and different aspects of life there – Spacey’s rebuilding of the rundown ancestral house, a simple meal of sandwiches in a small eatery, his near drowning because of his lack of knowledge of piloting boats in the seas, working in a small office without a computer, using a typewriter to write his column and finally finding love in the unlikeliest of places. Love, after all, has always managed to do that through centuries. :-) The rustic region captivated me so much that I later looked it up on imdb.com – it’s Newfoundland.

Kevin Spacey essays Quoyle’s entire journey excellently – his shell-shocked state at his wife’s behavior, his defeated look when he sees his broken-down ancestral house, his determination to work through life in this unfamiliar place, his uncertainty in getting adjusted in a small newspaper office, his enjoying the companionship of Julianne Moore and finally standing up to the editor for his column. Moore, as the simple calm widow, complements him nicely. Since I didn’t watch this movie from the beginning I am not sure if Judi Dench plays his mother. But her harsh demeanor gives a hint of a softer inner core wonderfully.

In this day and age, when everyone who has received a setback or gone through a tragedy in life just wants to curl up in a corner and die, this story of accepting what life dishes out to you and still marching on with a chin up fills one with hope – lots of hope! :-)