A famous father and his son making a film about a son with an absent father is a bit on the nose, no? Not if you\u2019re the Day-Lewises. Regardless of what truth peeks through the fiction of Anemone, debut writer-director Ronan Day-Lewis and co-writer\/star Daniel Day-Lewis give pop culture a heaping mound of mythos to sort through by playing into the lore of the living legend, who came out of retirement solely to make a film with his kid.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been eight years since Daniel Day-Lewis was on the big screen<\/a> and 20 years since his character, Ray Stoker, has seen his family. As many imagine Day-Lewis does in real life, Ray Stoker lives off the land in a single-room cabin alone in the woods, not speaking to anyone or encountering anyone to speak to. He\u2019s a brooding, mysterious creature. He\u2019s lived simply and undisturbed in the thick of the forest ever since he abandoned his pregnant wife Nessa (Samantha Morton) on a dime, for unknown reasons, leaving his brother Jem (Sean Bean) to care for her and their son Brian (Samuel Bottomley).<\/p>\n Now in his late teens, Brian expresses the sizzling anger embedded in his abandonment through brawls that leave his knuckles bruised and bleeding. As a last resort, Nessa and Jem decide to contact Ray, who is, of course, unreachable through any device. So, Jem sets out into the wilderness. A deeply religious man\u2014the spiritual antithesis to his blaspheming brother\u2014Jem believes he might be able to convince Ray to return if it means the livelihood of Ray\u2019s only son, the son he didn\u2019t stick around to meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n This all seems undeniably personal. A famous (and famously ascetic) father and son, both of whom have two brothers, making a film about fathers, sons, and brothers. It\u2019s as if they sat down and asked themselves: How do people see Daniel Day-Lewis? How can we depict the man they think he is in a dramatized way?<\/p>\n On top of characterizing Ray as a man no one has seen in a long time, who\u2019s considering coming out of retirement for his son, the duo wrote lines like, \u201cthe invisible man: Ray Stoker,\u201d and \u201cfamily reunion\u201d that speak directly to his public persona and the father-son collaboration, along with questions like, \u201cHow long has it been brother\u2026since you went limping off into the woods?\u201d and \u201cWhy did he leave us?\u201d that might as well be coming from the mouths of his admirers. The duo even wrote Ray croaking \u201cI\u2019m beyond your reach\u201d to an outsider. Unsurprisingly, Day-Lewis delivers every line with masterful, lived-in magnetism.<\/p>\n With a plot that remains obscured for a large portion of the runtime, and several significant plot details that stay in the shadows even longer, Anemone is full of festering secrets. They slowly rise to the surface through the sunken-wet soil the brothers trudge through on hikes in between liquored-up conversations, the only kind of conversation they can have, when they\u2019re not swimming in a new body of water. Their several scenes in the water seem to exist out of time. They splash and play like young brothers, as if they\u2019d never spent time apart. In all other scenarios, the lack of liquor and swimming only begets grim silence and near-tactile resentment.<\/p>\n\n