Message in a Bottle
USA 1999
Reviewed by Jamie Graham
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
On a shoreline, Theresa Osborne discovers a bottle in the sand and is moved by the contents: a heartfelt love letter addressed to someone named Catherine and signed "G". Theresa shows the letter to her colleagues at the Chicago Tribune where she works as a researcher. Columnist Charlie Toschi prints it, and the public response is enormous. Two readers send in other letters, found under similar circumstances, which appear to be the work of the same author. The Tribune traces the epistles to Garret Blake, a sailboat builder living in Saint Clair, California. Theresa visits Garret to research a follow-up. A hesitant courtship unfolds between them, and it transpires that Catherine - Garret's childhood sweetheart and wife - died two years ago during childbirth. Determining that Garret is still in mourning, Theresa returns to Chicago. Weeks pass, during which Garret completes work on a boat crafted in memory of his wife. He visits Theresa in Chicago where they make love for the first time. But Garret discovers his love letters and Toschi's newspaper column in her bedside drawer and leaves, disgusted by her deceit. Theresa attends Garret's boat lauch in Saint Clair, telling him to come for her when he's ready. Garret types another letter and sets sail to deliver it. In a storm, he chances upon a capsized family and loses his life while saving them. Theresa attends the funeral and talks to Garret's father, who shows her his son's final letter - a farewell note, telling his wife of his new love, Theresa.
Review
Message in a Bottle's first 30 minutes will lead many viewers into a misconception. Having discovered a love letter on a deserted shore, divorcee Theresa Osborne pours over its poignant prose with feverish intensity. By the time she decides to track down its mysterious author Garret, she has clearly fallen blindly in love. At this point it seems as if Message in a Bottle is about to encroach on similar epistolary territory to Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail (itself an update of The Shop around the Corner). However, rather than explore how love can be unleashed by written sentiments rather than physical interaction, Message in a Bottle quickly reveals itself to be something altogether different: a purely cinematic movie that tries to represent love transcendent through imagery and lush music alone.
Director Luis Mandoki (When a Man Loves a Woman) seems quite uninterested in observing courtship through ping-pong witticisms and aggressive dialogue, the staple diet of Ephron's and her imitators' romantic films. Instead, he's grasping for hidden meanings in the intangible. Each awkward pause says far more than the sentence that follows it, and few films outside the oeuvres of Antonioni and Malick rely so much on landscape to co-ordinate themes and portray psychology: Garret seems like a piece of the coastal town he lives in; Theresa is tentatively rooted in the urban world she's on the verge of escaping.
But while Mandoki's intention to rise above generic boundaries and represent love on a higher, almost spiritual level is commendable, the execution is less so. Gabriel Yared's orchestral score ebbs and flows like the ocean that plays such an integral role, but it rarely buoys the heart and never sweeps the emotions away. Likewise, the cinematography is strangely lifeless, the drab colours proving more dull than dreamlike. Potentially rhapsodic compositions of rustling treetops and windswept meadows fail to attain the sensual lyricism of, say, Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) or Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth (1950), and what fragile beauty there is collapses under the weight of its symbolic baggage.
Credits
- Producers
- Denise Di Novi
- Jim Wilson
- Kevin Costner
- Screenplay
- Gerald DiPego
- Based on the novel by
- Nicholas Sparks
- Director of Photography
- Caleb Deschanel
- Editor
- Steven Weisberg
- Production Designer
- Jeffrey Beecroft
- Music
- Gabriel Yared
- ©Warner Bros/Bel-Air Entertainment LLC
- Production Companies
- Warner Bros presents in association with Bel-Air Entertainment a Tig production in association with Di Novi Pictures
- Associate Producer
- Leslie Weisberg
- Production Associate
- Mary Courtney
- Unit Production Managers
- David Siegel
- Chicago Crew:
- Ronald G. Smith
- Location Managers
- David Wolfson
- Maine Crew:
- Tim Wilson
- Chicago Crew:
- Demetra Diamantopoulos
- Post-production Supervisor
- Mark Marshall
- 2nd Unit Director
- Gary Capo
- Aerial Unit Director
- David B. Nowell
- Assistant Directors
- Bruce G. Moriarty
- Nick Satriano
- David Ticotin
- Emily McGovern
- Robin Allen Paris
- 2nd Unit:
- David Silva
- Script Supervisor
- Karen Golden
- Casting
- Amanda Mackey Johnson
- Cathy Sandrich
- Associate:
- Mercedes Danforth
- Location:
- Sally Jackson
- Paul Hensler
- Camera Operator/Steadicam
- P. Scott Sakamoto
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- David J. Negron
- Visual Effects Co-ordinator
- Kristin Hensley
- Visual Effects
- Cinesite Digital Studios
- Digital Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Thomas J. Smith
- Digital Effects Producer:
- Kevin Elam
- Composite Supervisor:
- Gregory Liegey
- Digital Compositors:
- David Lingenfelser
- Tom Zils
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- David Kelsey
- Foreman:
- Mark T. Noel
- Crew:
- Alden Wayne Dumas
- Ronald MacInnes
- Scott Garcia
- Michael Rifkin
- Mike Roundy
- Aaron Walters
- Casey Cavanaugh
- Chicago Crew:
- Rodman Kiser
- Video/Graphics Supervisor
- Liz Radley
- Visual Effects Editor
- H. Dwight Raymond IV
- Additional Editor
- Samuel Craven
- Art Directors
- Steve Saklad
- Mark Zuelzke
- Set Designers
- Masako Masuda
- Andrea Dopaso
- Mike Cukers
- Nancy Deren
- Set Decorators
- Dorree Cooper
- Elaine O'Donnell
- Illustrators
- John Mann
- Dan Sweetman
- Costume Designer
- Bernie Pollack
- Costume Supervisor
- Nick Scarano
- Key Make-up
- Kathrine James
- Key Hair
- Anne Morgan
- Additional Hair
- Kathrine Gordon
- Title Design
- Greenberg/Schluter
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title
- Orchestrations
- Gabriel Yared
- John Bell
- Music Score Co-ordinator
- Ling Ling Li
- Supervising Music Editor
- Robert Randles
- Music Editor
- Tod Holcomb
- Music Scoring Mixer
- John Richards
- Music Consultant
- Andy Hill
- Soundtrack
- "I Will Know Your Love" by Beth Nielsen Chapman, Annie Roboff, performed by Beth Nielsen Chapman; "No Mermaid" by/performed by Sinéad Lohan; "Let Me Let Go" by Steve Diamond, Dennis Morgan, performed by Faith Hill; "Only Lonely" by Darius Rucker, Dean Felber, Mark Bryan, Jim Sonefeld, performed by Hootie & the Blowfish; "Beyond the Blue" by Beth Nielsen Chapman, Gary Nicholson, performed by Beth Nielsen Chapman; "Fallen Angel" by Marc Cohn, Kenny White, performed by Marc Cohn; "I Love You" by/performed by Sarah McLachlan; "Carolina" by/performed by Sheryl Crow; "I Could Not Ask for More" by Diane Warren, performed by Edwin McCain; "One More Time" by Richard Marx, performed by Laura Pausini
- Sound Design
- Lance Brown
- Production Sound Mixer
- Jose Antonio Garcia
- Re-recording Mixers
- John Reitz
- David Campbell
- Gregg Rudloff
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Bruce Stambler
- Richard E. Yawn
- Dialogue Editors
- Donald L. Warner Jr
- Kim Secrist
- Bruce Fortune
- Bernard Weiser
- Sound Effects Editors
- Glenn Hoskinson
- Steve Nelson
- Gary Blufer
- ADR
- Supervising Editor:
- Jessica Gallavan
- Editor:
- Becky Sullivan
- Foley
- Supervising Editor:
- Michael Dressel
- Editors:
- Shawn Sykora
- Bob Beher
- John Roesch
- Marine Consultants
- Mike George
- Rick Hicks
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Lance Gilbert
- Norman Howell
- Cast
- Kevin Costner
- Garret Blake
- Robin Wright Penn
- Theresa Osborne
- Paul Newman
- Dodge Blake
- John Savage
- Johnny Land
- Illeana Douglas
- Lina Paul
- Robbie Coltrane
- Charlie Toschi
- Jesse James
- Jason Osborne
- Bethel Leslie
- Marta Land
- Tom Aldredge
- Hank Land
- Viveka Davis
- Alva
- Raphael Sbarge
- Andy
- Richard Hamilton
- Chet
- Rosemary Murphy
- Helen at the B&B
- Steven Eckholdt
- David
- Susan Brightbill
- Catherine
- Patricia Belcher
- Annie
- Steve Mellor
- man on dock
- Lance Gilbert
- man on sinking boat
- Jennifer Lamb
- woman on sinking boat
- Hayden Panettiere
- girl on sinking boat
- Walt MacPherson
- Pete the cop
- Justin DiPego
- typewriter repairman
- Meagan Riley-Grant
- Mary
- Karen Fowler
- mother in car
- Caleb Deschanel
- man at the B&B
- Mauricio Ochmann
- mail boy
- Anthony Genovese
- photographer
- Elizabeth Guindi
- Christine
- Donald Watson
- diner patron 1
- Clapham Murray
- diner patron 2
- Gregg Trzaskowski
- Robert E. Tarlow
- Johnny's friends
- Philip Traynor
- boy in car
- Daniel V. Trefts
- policeman on boat
- Christina Bergstrom
- Norman Fessler
- officers
- Mark Thomason
- Garret photo double
- David W. Paris
- Robert Kenney
- helicopter pilots
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
- 11,815 feet
- 131 minutes 17 seconds
- Dolby digital/DTS stereo/SDDS
- Colour by
- Technicolor
- Anamorphic [Panavision]