WhatzUp

Ballad of Jack and Rose
by Derek Neff

Raising a child is a difficult proposition under the best of circumstances; raising a child when the parent harbors a political and philosophical point of view that radically differs from the rest of society borders on the impossible. As that parent, one’s idea of parental success might look dangerously, even criminally irresponsible, to everyone else. Such is the conundrum posed by Rebecca Miller’s extraordinary Ballad of Jack and Rose which takes place on a small island off the East Coast in the mid-1980s.

The parent in question is environmentalist Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis), who is raising his beautiful teenage daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) in almost complete isolation in a domed house that was once a utopian commune. Jack and Rose are blissfully happy in their quiet, self-contained world; the only thing that mars their good time is when a developer (Beau Bridges) begins putting up a bunch of cookie-cutter McMansions nearby. Jack responds by taking potshots at the building crew with his shotgun, sending the crew scattering.

But even this doesn’t seriously challenge Jack and Rose’s happy, insular life. What does is the fact that Jack has fallen ill, and Rose - who, although very bright and sweet, hasn’t known anything but the life Jack has created for her - pledges that she will take her own life if/when Jack dies. (What Rose really wants from Jack is so disturbingly, terrifyingly simple that at first we don’t quite grasp it.)

One day, after a trip to the mainland, Jack brings home the girlfriend he’s secretly been dating for the past few months, Kathleen (Catherine Keener), along with Kathleen’s two teenage sons (Paul Dano and Ryan McDonald). Rose protests against this encroachment on her perfect life by (a) attempting to scare (or even harm) Katherine and (b) losing her virginity with one of her sons.

Jack is at first strongly reminiscent of the Harrison Ford character in Peter Weir’s Mosquito Coast - both completely reject modern American culture, both want to prevent their children from being exposed to its seductive charms - but Jack is more passive than Ford’s character. Indeed, Jack’s downfall is that he is blind to the depths of his daughter’s problems, and is even caught off guard by his own impulses. (Day-Lewis delivers an amazingly sympathetic, layered, soul-baring performance here, one of his best yet.)

Writer/director Miller - whose previous movie, Personal Velocity, was one of the best of 2003 - has crafted a subtle, literate and ultimately disturbing study of the ways in which idealism can curdle, and utopia can collapse under the weight of our basest human urges. It’s not for everyone - Miller’s own authorial viewpoint is, we sense, nearer to Jack’s than to mainstream America’s conception of what is “right” and “normal” - but for those looking for something a little off the beaten path themselves, this one isn’t to be missed.