The Ballad of Jack and Rose - Palm Beach Post

'Ballad of Jack and Rose' hits highs and lows

By HAP ERSTEIN
Palm Beach Post

The tight-knit Big Chill gang aside, what did happen to the children of the '60s? Some undoubtedly saw that they could not change the world, so they grew up, got jobs and accepted society's rules.

Yet there remained a few believers like Jack Slavin who stayed true to the hippie manifesto, and tried to pass on their perceived wisdom to their offspring. Who, naturally, rebelled.

IFC Films

'The Ballad of Jack and Rose'

B-

The verdict: A modern "Tempest" too heavy with symbolism, saved by Day-Lewis' performance.

Director: Rebecca Miller
Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Camilla Belle, Beau Bridges, Catherine Keener, Paul Dano, Ryan McDonald
Run time: 111 minutes
Release date: March 25, 2005
Rating: R for language, sexual content and some drug material.
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Rebecca Miller's intriguing, but not entirely satisfying new film, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, considers the plight of an aging counter-culture recluse who continues to live in a commune gone to seed with his 16-year-old daughter, Rose (Camilla Belle). Home-schooled, sheltered from mass communications and virtually unaware of anyone beyond her father, Rose has lived the sort of unnatural existence that can only lead to a dire conclusion.

Jack and Rose's life together on an island off the eastern coast of the United States has a literary quality, particularly as screenwriter-director Miller (Personal Velocity) trowels on the symbolism, from the rite-of-passage cutting of Rose's hair to the deadly copperhead that slithers his way around their Eden-like, back-to-the-earth home.

Shakespeare buffs will recognize allusions to The Tempest's Prospero and Miranda, whose world became threatened by the arrival of others.

What makes The Ballad of Jack and Rose compelling is the performance by the wiry, intense Daniel Day-Lewis — Miller's husband — as the transplanted Scotsman who dotes on his daughter, but has not considered the consequences of his life choice upon her. He is again a commanding physical presence with a wound-tight tension. He is fascinating to watch, even as the film spins out of control.

With no particular justification, Jack brings his mainland girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two teenage sons home, to live with Rose and himself. Like a child who has to share parental attention with a newborn, Rose reacts with unbridled jealousy, not helped by inadvertently spying on her father making love with Kathleen.

Rose asks Kathleen's older son Rodney, a chubby hairdresser wannabe, to bed her, but he opts instead to give her a clip job. Still trying to punish Jack — for whom we are invited to think she has incestuous feelings — Rose settles for losing her virginity to the other brother and flaunting it in front of her father.

Making Jack less sympathetic is a subplot involving a housing developer (Beau Bridges) whose model homes near the commune get used for Jack's target practice.

Although Miller cannot make all of this credible, she writes crisp dialogue and delivers the tale with some lyrical visuals of Canada's Prince Edward Island. With The Ballad of Jack and Rose, she remains an emerging talent whose narrative interests are probably beyond mainstream tastes.

Miller's chief asset continues to be her husband, an actor so talented he almost makes this ballad sing.