Nepo baby films are nothing new, but it’s hard to think of a bigger nepo flex than Ronan Day-Lewis bringing his legendary dad out of eight years of retirement to star in his debut movie. All talk of Anemone has been dominated by the Day-Lewis factor, and rightly so – the intrigue of seeing one of the all-time great screen actors back in the cinema really is the only reason to seek out this visually striking but otherwise thunderously dull movie. A portentous and overlong mess of silent, bloke-y feelings, it’s a film written by a father-son duo, in fact defined by its father-son collaboration on all fronts, yet has literally nothing insightful or interesting to say about fathers and sons.
The father Daniel Day-Lewis plays the father Ray Stoker here, a British Army vet who did something undisclosed but terrible during his service in Northern Ireland and now lives alone deep in the woods of northern England, haunted by ghosts and desiring no company. When his own long-abandoned son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) has a psychological collapse, going AWOL from his own military obligations, Ray’s brother Jem (Sean Bean), who has raised Brian as his own alongside Ray’s ex Nessa (Samantha Morton), heads into the trees to retrieve his brother and demand answers.
It’s not a thrilling trip, everyone involved battling against a ponderously crap script that mistakes male emotional unavailability for depth and frequently deployed army jargon for backstory. At least Day-Lewis Jr has an ace up his sleeve. Despite everything else, it is *great* to have DDL back, and he is still captivating even when working with this diminished material, displayed in two monologues that bookend the story, neither of which look like much on the page but are made breathtaking by his delivery. Surrounded by this performance, Bean is mostly just there to react to Day-Lewis, but he makes a proper go of that.
An overly dark and grey colour palette aside, there are some impressive visual flourishes here too, RDL displaying a real stylist’s eye when we’re out in the woods. The foliage and dark skies really feel alive, as do the occasional surrealist interludes, which is why it’s even more insufferable whenever we cut back to Nessa and Brian on the home front of the family crisis. Without DDL or any lush wilderness, every one of these scenes feels like a colossal waste of time, the crux of Anemone’s ultra-sluggish pacing problem.
On one hand, it would feel weird to let 2025 pass cinematically without going to see Daniel Day-Lewis’s comeback role. Yet, on the other, Anemone does not particularly deserve your time and money. Lumpen and boring and irritatingly convinced of its own genius and import, it’s a reminder (not that one was really needed) of how good Day-Lewis is, and it’s an interesting visual calling card for his son as a director. As a showcase for the pair as writers, though, it’s an embarrassment.
Jack Blackwell – Film Reviews 