Anemone ★★½

It has been eight years since Daniel Day-Lewis last appeared in a film. In the lead up to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis had made it clear he intended to retire. It was not the first time he had stepped away from acting, having previously taken a hiatus to become a shoe-maker in Italy in between making The Boxer (1997) and Gangs of New York (2002). As Day-Lewis was notoriously selective even during his more active periods, any time he decides to take on a role is an exciting one and Anemone is no exception. Marking not only his return to acting, but also the directorial debut of his son Ronan Day-Lewis – the father and son pairing wrote the script together, as well – Anemone is a heavy and thoughtful look at familial trauma, violence, toxic masculinity, and what is passed from father to son.

Anemone takes a while to get going. The final two-thirds are worthwhile, but one could not be blamed for struggling to get through the opening third. With sparse dialogue, long scenes of characters just sitting around in a remote home in the woods, a few unexpected dream-like appearances, and very little for the audience to hang onto, Anemone drops the viewer into the deep end of the heavy atmosphere inhabiting these characters’ everyday existence. The main gist is simple: Jem Stoker (Sean Bean) has traveled to the remote hideout where his hermit brother Ray (Daniel Day-Lewis) lives to urge him to come home. Ray’s son Brian (Samuel Bottomley) is struggling, having recently severely beaten a fellow student after they had made a snide remark about Ray. Though never in Brian’s life, Ray’s infamous part in The Troubles has often been a sore spot for Brian and an easy mark for anybody looking to get a rise out of him. However, on this occasion, he was not able to look away and Jem knows only Ray could connect with the boy, his pain, and help him find some peace with the inherited propensity to violence and trauma, as well as the abandonment and isolation Brian feels. Ray’s ex and Brian’s mother Nessa (Samantha Morton) has done what she could, as has Brian’s girlfriend Hattie (Safia Oakley-Green), but the young man is clearly at a crossroads.

The sluggish pacing is a challenge, while Ronan Day-Lewis struggles to hone in his own artistic ambitions to allow Anemone to breathe. Frequently cutting away from the characters for big aerial shots that spin down and cut dramatically back to the remote home where Ray lives or indulgent dream sequences that generally make little sense (though, along the same lines, a real world climactic hailstorm is brilliantly executed with great effects and a clear messaging that really sells it both action-wise and emotionally), Anemone is at times at war with its lead creative minds’ attempts to find his own directorial voice. The script written by Daniel and Ronan Day-Lewis, too, is underwhelming. Though wise in setting up the elder Day-Lewis with plenty of monologues, the dialogue feels empty and provocative at times while over-explanatory at others. Anemone carries with it a clear message about how Jem and Ray’s father was distant, never spoke much, and carried with him the weight of the world to the point that neither Jem nor Ray knew how to handle their own emotions. As things went awry in The Troubles – in a very poignant and powerfully delivered monologue, Ray explains his part in a more controversial act and it is this scene that does stand out as a real highlight – and Ray’s PTSD, guilt, and shame built, it came to his own doorstep with his new wife and son to the point he felt compelled to run to avoid facing anything. Now Brian is at the same point with this generational struggle needing to either be dealt with or it will consume another member of the Stoker family. 

Anemone is heavy, understanding, and smart, even if over-explanatory, and its thematic content is deftly handled even if the actual dialogue is lacking. These are rich and very human characters, all benefitting from the fantastic cast. It goes without saying that Daniel Day-Lewis is exemplary. Few can deliver a wild monologue like he can, selling every beat and feeling. He lives through it all, bringing it all to life for the viewer in a special way. He needs so little to make Anemone into a compelling and transfixing work that one wishes the overall execution were better because this could have been a great film with a central performance as outstanding as this one. Sean Bean, though given the impossible task of sharing the screen constantly with this acting legend, also impresses with a performance that bounces off of the oddball and poorly mannered nature of Day-Lewis’s Ray with a natural awkwardness and uncertainty. Jem, too, struggles with the same trauma that dominates Ray’s life with these two brothers having been made distant by their shared issues. Jem expresses it differently and has largely adjusted to life in the modern world with Bean capturing this with great power and authenticity, drawing a sharp contrast to the more outrageous behavior of Ray. Samantha Morton is strong as Nessa, as well, given one particularly stirring monologue where she lays out where everything went wrong between her and Ray. Morton captures the unique gray area of Nessa’s feelings, both understanding of what happened to Ray and obviously hurt by his final course of action. It is a compelling role, even if Nessa is given comparably less screentime than her male counterparts.

Anemone is a mixed bag. Its script and direction are clear flaws, though even in its artistic indulgences, the cinematography can be quite captivating – this is especially true in a fantastic long tracking shot along a beachfront – with Anemone being a striking film at every turn. As it builds to its climactic reckoning as Jem tries to convince Ray to come home, Anemone’s rich themes and tremendous performances enable it to mostly overcome its flaws and stand as an interesting debut for Ronan Day-Lewis.