PG-13 | 1h 46min | Drama, Family | 1999
“The Deep End of the Ocean” (1999) feels hurried, but its message to us, as families, is to slow down.
Ulu Grosbard directs this film based on Stephen Schiff’s screenplay as adapted from Jacquelyn Mitchard’s best-selling novel.
A visibly happy, fulfilled couple, Beth (Michelle Pfeiffer) and her husband Pat (Treat Williams), are forced to contend with the sudden, unexplained disappearance of their 3-year-old son, Ben, at Beth’s school reunion party.
They and their other kids, baby-daughter Kerry and pre-teen son Vincent, learn to cope with this devastating loss until, after nine bruising years, almost too miraculously, Ben re-enters their life.
Instead of injecting action and spectacle around the kidnapping and drawn out search for Ben, Grosbard dwells on what Ben’s loss, and mysterious return, teaches the family about themselves. His theme is that, if you don’t offer your family love when it’s needed, it’s unlikely to be received when you offer it later, and only when it suits you. You must offer love, even when it hurts—especially when it hurts.
Beth remains stuck in the past with her own internal “pause” button. Throttled by guilt and petulance, she’s unable to express love or receive it when her family showers it on her. She shuts herself off, indulging in a decade of depression, imagining that no one pines for Ben as much as she does. Pat, however, sees things in perspective and gets on with life, caring for their other two kids.
Their now teenage son Vincent (Jonathan Jackson) has grown up, knowing that Beth, albeit subconsciously, blames him. After all, he’s the one who let go of Ben’s hand when Beth had entrusted him with the child while she was attending to something urgent at that fateful party.
Half-Spoken Emotions
To avoid scenes that risk excessive mushiness, Grosbard shifts to a wisecrack, a game of basketball on the porch, a phone call, or a sarcastic retort. He keeps the mood light, allowing us, the audience, to feel the half-spoken emotions more fully on screen, while his characters hurry on.Counterintuitively, even with the abrupt pacing, Grosbard still gets us thinking and feeling more profoundly than if he’d taken his time, to plumb the deep end of an ocean of emotion.
That said, and without revealing crucial twists, the film does far less justice to the characterization, backstories, arcs, and interiority of characters who emerge later, and lets down the ones appearing early on.
Yet it’s a touching tale, movingly told. Schiff and Grosbard tell us that we can love (and forgive) in the present, only when we don’t cling to our damaged past.
When Pat and Beth rediscover Ben, they’re desperate to cloud out his past and suffocate him with their pent-up affection for him. But now it’s Beth’s turn to see things in perspective. She teaches Pat that they’re merely pretending to embrace the present; they’re trying to love the 3-year-old they lost, not the 11-year-old they’ve found.
Pfeiffer Is Outstanding
Pfeiffer ratchets up a sense of panic as Ben’s disappearance unfolds. She tunes out for years, then, suddenly, tunes back in again. She hits every dramatic note, from selfish preoccupation and victimhood to eventual empathy. As friends comb every inch of that building for Ben, someone asks, “Pat will be here soon, right?” A near-hysterical Beth mutters, “I didn’t call him. I thought we'd find Ben right away.”You feel Beth’s helpless terror, her bottomless guilt at being the parent in charge when Ben disappears, her anger at an unyielding police search, her shock when she overhears cops theorize that Ben’s dead and that further search is futile.
During a replay of a TV missing child notice, we listen to Beth’s voice tremble as she heartbreakingly describes her child, not just his physique and clothes, as only doting mothers can: He’s big for his age, he speaks clearly but softly, he’s afraid of water, and loves to sing, especially the same song over and over.
Watch Beth’s hands tremble, as she lays eyes on the grown-up Ben (a fetching Ryan Merriman), for the first time through her half-open front door. She’s trying not to speak too loudly or move too suddenly, petrified that she’ll disrupt the dream.
Jackson as the troubled teenage Vincent is excellent. Like his mother, he oozes guilt. But he also resents the fact that, as far she’s concerned, he’s “vanished” too; she’s so immersed in mourning over Ben that she barely notices Vincent grow up.
Goldberg is good fun as Detective Candy, delivering her lines deadpan and playing sounding board to an inconsolable Beth. She reminds Beth that she’s still a wife to an affectionate husband and a mother to other kids who need her.
What explains Beth’s tragedy? Her depression is willful because she chooses to turn away from her family, repeatedly. She spurns their love every Christmas, every New Year, every Thanksgiving, every Halloween. She’s sullen not just at breakfast, but at lunch and dinner, too. Punishing herself, she punishes everyone else.
By focusing inordinately on her pain and blinding herself to her family, Beth ends up losing not just one child, but nearly losing her husband and other children as well. But something changes in Beth that changes everything.
Although the film delves into deep emotional issues, it’s a recommended watch for the whole family.
