Fassbender’s point focused on how his character initially was so reluctant to take that baby girl and pretend his wife had given birth to her on their remote island.
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“I knew that my first scene the next day was Isabel when she first arrives on the island”, she says. I thought it was such an original story – an old-fashioned-type story – and I found that very refreshing. When we started to work, Michael and I both challenged and pushed each other. “Then you’re just watching a brand, as opposed to an actor”. Knowing the right thing to do would be to report the baby and dead man, presumably the father, to the authorities, the freshly painful loss of their second child makes Isabel plead with Tom to not tell anyone, to keep and raise the baby as their own.
Little Men Two 13-year-olds become fast friends in a changing Brooklyn neighborhood in writer-director Ira Sachs’ much-praised follow-up to another NY story – and another NY real estate story – Love Is Strange. “She’s got all of those things in spades”.
The praise from some though, was glowing: “A mesmerising, engrossing and beautifully made cinematic experience”, wrote New York Observer’s Rex Reed, “Rare as a pink unicorn, it enchants for more than two hours and makes you wish for at least one hour more”.
The Light Between Oceans marks the first time director Derek Cianfrance has adapted a novel, but he has always been interested in creating a cinema of intimacy and probing into themes of love, family, legacy, loneliness, and choices – the very same passions that made Stedman’s novel resonate with so many.
“Run for the hills”, Fassbender says was his initial reaction, humming the Iron Maiden song of the same name. “But I love the challenge of having the audience understand her and her actions”. “This one just has an epic backdrop”, says the Brooklyn writer-director.
“I remember in Sweden, I used to set the alarm for 2 or 3 a.m. and get up with my mom to watch the Oscars”. Vikander is finishing up Wim Wenders’ “Submergence” and plans to produce another film before donning Lara Croft’s boots. “The Light Between Oceans” is a meal that lights up the tastebuds but doesn’t fully satisfy. It presents a really interesting dilemma. The slow progression of Tom and Isabel’s courtship through an exchange of letters felt less like Cianfrance and more like Nicholas Sparks.
“It’s a wonderful thing, in our times now, to show”, Vikander adds. It was just ordinary people who make decisions that are very damaging and costly. You know where this is going.
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We can totally see why Vikander fell in love with the guy.
