Opening in theaters October 3 is ‘Anemone,’ directed by Ronan Day-Lewis and starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Safia Oakley-Green, and Samuel Bottomley.
Gt8yC8AZMS7CLM9UR9c0ZRelated Article: Daniel Day-Lewis to Return to Acting for His Son’s Movie ‘Anemone’
Initial Thoughts
It’s been eight years since the great Daniel Day-Lewis last appeared in a motion picture – ‘Phantom Thread,’ one of my least favorite Paul Thomas Anderson films – so the news of his return was rightly regarded with lots of anticipation.
But while Day-Lewis remains a riveting, magnetic presence on screen, the film itself, ‘Anemone,’ ends up somewhat of disappointment. Co-written by the actor with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis – who also makes his feature directorial debut here – ‘Anemone’ is painstakingly slow in stretching a thin, rather well-worn plot to two hours. The younger Day-Lewis pulls off some gorgeous imagery (as befitting his work as a painter), but aside from that and the acting by his father and Sean Bean, there’s not enough here to make this a welcome return for the three-time Oscar winner.
Story and Direction
‘Anemone’ opens with what chillingly looks like children’s drawings of the Troubles in Ireland and the conflict between the IRA and the British Army, immediately giving us an idea of the story’s backdrop. But the main narrative itself is revealed only sluggishly, as Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) leaves his partner Nessa (Samantha Morton) and her son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) on a quest to see his estranged younger brother Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis), who has exiled himself to a cabin deep in a remote forest for 20 years with virtually no contact from his family.
There’s a palpable unease between the two men at first, with the paranoid and incommunicative Ray only gradually opening up to his sibling. As the film continues, we find out – bit by bit – that Jem is deeply religious while Ray is not (with his own very good reasons, which he recounts in a long monologue as disgusting as it is bizarre), that both men were subjected to a brutal upbringing from their father, and that both also served in the military during the Troubles – with Ray in particularly wracked by memories that he can’t let go. But Jem is on a mission to bring his brother back with him in order to deal with a family situation that has reached the point of crisis.
In the end, that storyline is just not enough to sustain any momentum, and ‘Anemone’ begins to drag in all the wrong places, just as the critical revelations begin to fully come to light. There are lots of scenes of Ray or Ray and Jem walking through woods or along beaches, which only pad out the essential slimness of the narrative. And that narrative itself doesn’t necessarily tell us anything new that we haven’t seen in tales like this before, of absent, violent, or disengaged fathers, or of men traumatized by the institutions in which they were raised and the legacies they bequeath their sons.
Ronan Day-Lewis and cinematographer Ben Fordesman pull off a number of gorgeous, painterly compositions – while working primarily in muted greens, blues, and browns – but the director also shows his relative greenness behind the camera with some awkwardly showy moves as well. More hallucinatory sequences are mysterious seemingly just for the sake of it, while other scenes – like a massive hailstorm battering down on the characters – seem heavy-handed in their symbolism, as is the fact that the flower of the title, which Jem and Ray’s father used to grow, continues to bloom outside Ray’s cabin.
Cast and Performances
‘Anemone’ is a small movie, with just five main speaking parts, but of course Daniel Day-Lewis is the main attraction here. And he brings all of his skills to bear in what is certainly an enigmatic, shape-shifting character. Ray Stoker is at times reclusive, misanthropic, cruel, and cold, with a hint of violence churning under the surface; but Day-Lewis subtly, masterfully peels back the hard exterior to show us vulnerability, hurt, and even love. His work meets the moment in a movie that needs him to essentially give it purpose.
Two often underrated actors get a chance to shine here as well. Samantha Morton’s role as the woman at the nexus of the lives of these three men is less well-defined, unfortunately, but Morton does what she can and creates a portrait of a woman for whom a hard life has not quite destroyed her heart just yet. And we have to give it up for Sean Bean, another great British actor who often doesn’t get the credit he deserves, as Jem, the grounded, decent, pragmatic counterweight to his impulsive and tormented brother. Spoiler alert: Bean also avoids the fate that usually befalls his characters in films, which is nice to see.
Final Thoughts
As we stated earlier, Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor one can always watch for his total submersion into whatever character he’s playing, and he’s lost none of that powerful presence in the eight years he’s been away. ‘Anemone’ is worth seeing if you are a DDL completist, while Ronan Day-Lewis certain has enough visual acumen to point toward a promising career as a filmmaker. Bobby Krlic (aka The Haxan Cloak) also contributes a haunting, guitar-driven score that adds a lot of atmosphere.
But by the time it reaches a climax that should be emotional but doesn’t quite get there, ‘Anemone’ doesn’t offer enough of a compelling reason for Daniel Day Lewis’ return, except for the fact that the film – like its subject matter – is a family affair.
‘Anemone’ receives a score of 50 out of 100.
What is the plot of ‘Anemone’?
A mysterious shared history has left brothers Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) and Jem (Sean Bean) Stoker estranged for 20 years, with Ray living in self-imposed exile. But a family crisis forces Jem to track Ray down in his cabin deep in the woods and ask him to revisit the most troubling moments of their past.
Who is in the cast of ‘Anemone’?
- Daniel Day-Lewis as Ray Stoker
- Sean Bean as Jem Stoker
- Samantha Morton as Nessa Stoker
- Samuel Bottomley as Brian Stoker
- Safia Oakley-Green as Hattie
Daniel Day-Lewis Movies and TV Shows:
- ‘Gandhi‘ (1983)
- ‘The Bounty‘ (1984)
- ‘My Beautiful Laundrette‘ (1986)
- ‘A Room with a View‘ (1986)
- ‘Nanou‘ (1988)
- ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being‘ (1988)
- ‘My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown‘ (1989)
- ‘Eversmile New Jersey‘ (1991)
- ‘The Last of the Mohicans‘ (1992)
- ‘The Age of Innocence‘ (1993)
- ‘In the Name of the Father‘ (1993)
- ‘The Crucible‘ (1996)
- ‘The Boxer‘ (1997)
- ‘Gangs of New York‘ (2002)
- ‘The Ballad of Jack and Rose‘ (2005)
- ‘There Will Be Blood‘ (2008)
- ‘Nine‘ (2009)
- ‘Lincoln‘ (2012)
- ‘Phantom Thread‘ (2018)
- ‘Anemone’ (2025)
