Word: balladic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Daniel Day-Lewis and Rebecca Miller’s first cinematic love-baby, The Ballad of Jack and Rose is far from smooth-skinned and gurgling—beneath the stunning surface is a disturbing whirl of chaos and sorrow...
...Ballad in fact echoes this family connection, though only in the sense of a girl meeting her possible “partner” in the house of her father. Unfortunately, the context and result of the situation is a bit less cheery than that of Day-Lewis and Miller. In the film, Jack’s (Day-Lewis) 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camille Belle, Jurassic Park), sees her world fall to pieces in a flash...
...Ballad is one of those films where you kick yourself for having paid for such a saddening experience, but soon the feeling fades, and all that you are left with is the memory of how visual the film was, forgetting the misery. It elicits not a bawling depression, but more of a building frustration, watching as petals of innocence are trampled by the stinking feet of the world...
...Ballad of Jack and Rose isn’t just another teenager/drugs/sex flick (even though Jena Malone is in it, and she seems to be floating farther and farther away from little star-gazing Ellie of Contact). It surely isn’t the usual romantic movie (so don’t go into the movie expecting a kissy comedy, no matter what you dream about Day-Lewis). It doesn’t fit into the usual artsy category either...
...heights, but it does give its star a nicely gnarled ogre to play. Day-Lewis, who can make lunatic intensity seem a form of sainthood, finds in Jack a lion whose majesty is in the severe wounds he has inflicted and been afflicted by. The film is Jack's ballad, and Day-Lewis its roaring, charismatic bard. --By Richard Corliss