The Ballad of Jack and Rose
Tags: storytelling, home movie

Plot synopsis:
Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis), a Scottish farmer with a heart ailment, lives on an island which had been a hippie commune decades before. He is struggling to keep landowners from building developments on the wetland. His teenaged daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) is a beautiful but isolated girl with a passion for gardening. Since Rose's mother had left the family, Jack homeschooled his daughter and did not expose her to life beyond their small island home. Jack believes that they both "need a woman around." He travels to the mainland to ask his girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) to move in with him. Jack breaks the news to a shocked Rose, from whom he had kept his relationship a secret. Rose remains disdainful when Kathleen and her two teenage sons move in.
Kathleen struggles to adapt to the Slavin's rural lifestyle. Her sons Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano) are almost polar opposites; Thaddius is a sullen, rude delinquent, while Rodney is insecure and often overlooked. While she still has a strained relationship with Kathleen, Rose develops strange bonds with her new "step-brothers." It is clear that Thaddius is attracted to her, but Rose does not like him. One night, Rose spies on Jack and Kathleen in bed together, and develops a strange jealousy toward Kathleen. Rose decides to lose her virginity, and shocks Rodney by confronting him topless and asking him for sex. Rodney refuses and reasons with her, and instead ends up giving her a dramatic haircut. Afterward, Rose calmly takes her father's shotgun and possibly misfires it into Jack and Kathleen's bedroom as they sleep. An initially shocked Jack confronts Rose in disbelief, but the two seem to forget the event within minutes.
Kathleen asks Jack about his relationship with Rose, and how she might have psychological problems that should be dealt with. Jack denies that his daughter has any problems. Meanwhile, Rose and Rodney become good friends. Rodney is often criticized by his mother for being overweight, and the two fight constantly about his diet, but Rose sees only his kindness and intelligence. However, still on a mission to lose her virginity, Rose's thoughts turn to Thaddius. While trapping a copperhead intended for scaring Kathleen, Rose sees Thaddius and a girl named Red Berry having sex in the woods. Later that night, Thaddius enters Rose's room and though she dislikes him, Rose allows him to have sex with her. The copperhead, which Rose has kept in its cage under her bed, escapes into the house when the lock of the cage is loosened and drops open by the vibrations of the bed that Thaddius and Rose are having sex in.
To irk her father, Rose hangs her bloodied bedsheet in the front yard. Jack is furious that his daughter has been "ruined," and gives Thaddius one day to move out. Meanwhile, Kathleen is cornered by the copperhead. The resulting chaos puts the whole household on edge. That night, Rose holds a screening of a homemade movie about the hippie commune in her treehouse. As the film rolls, Thaddius advances on Rose and is stopped by Jack. After a scuffle, Thaddius falls from the treehouse and is rushed to the hospital. Rose runs away and hides for days. Jack finally finds her, and offers to ask Kathleen to leave if it would bring Rose home. A distraught Kathleen demands $20,000 in exchange for leaving, which Jack pays.
Jack returns to Rose's hideout, and she is overjoyed with the news that Kathleen is gone. That night, Rose kisses Jack, and the shock that his daughter is in love with him makes him upset, and he weeps. Waking the next morning, the memory of the kiss haunts Jack. He and Rose go to the house of the builder, Marty Rance, and Jack breaks down, finding that he has no fight left in him. He tells Rance to destroy the wetlands. He and Rose return home, and Jack dies within a few days. Rose had originally planned to kill herself when her father died, but after setting the house on fire and lying down next to Jack's body, she changes her mind and escapes.
Two years later, Rose is shown living in Vermont and working in a greenhouse where Gray, her father's friend from the island, works as well.

Review: Having admired its director, Rebecca Miller in all her films, we were right in seeing it in the wide screen of the main theater because that seems to be the perfect way to watch this intimate picture.Ms. Miller takes us to an island off the coast of the continental mainland to set her story.
We gather Jack and Rose have a special bond that at times border in incest.Jack believes in keeping the island the way it is; development is coming fast and furious in the way of luxury homes being built in what probably will be a gated community where people of the same background and financial means will live, in sharp contrast as the commune idea that attracted Jack to the place.
The director ought to be congratulated for involving us in the film and making us care for what will happen to Jack and Rose.Daniel Day-Lewis is an actor who doesn't work much these days and that is our loss!
Not only is she beautiful, but she clearly exudes an innate intelligence that pays off in her portrayal of the girl who sees her world fall apart and has no way to stop what is killing her father.Catherine Keener makes a valuable contribution to the film as Kathleen.
That is not meant to be because Jack realizes that in "importing" her to the island she gets in the way of the perfect balance between father and daughter.Ryan McDonald makes the confused Rodney come alive.
The rest of the cast include minor appearances by Beau Bridges, Jason Lee, Jena Malone and Paul Dano, who plays Thaddius the other son."The Ballad of Jack and Rose" is clearly not for a wide audience because it's too intelligent to get a broader distribution, but the fans of Rebecca Miller will always cherish this film for what she brought to it and for the magnificent performances she got from her cast.
Lewis portrays Jack, a single father who has lived on an island in isolation with his daughter until his new girlfriend comes to move in.
In an effort to to marginalize the girlfriend, Rose takes up a new-found interest in sexuality, thinking that must be what her father wants and is getting from the girlfriend.It's obvious to anyone watching that Jack loves his daughter, and in many ways has been a wonderful father to her.
Rose displays all the postcards her mother sends on a wall in the house and tells the new girlfriend that "one day she's coming back."I always find Daniel Day-Lewis's characters engaging, and Jack is no different.
This time, he's an ageing hippy from Motherwell (judging by his impeccable accent), living on in an abandoned commune with Rose, his daughter (Camilla Belle) who has been so well kept away from the corrupting influences of the outside world that she behaves like his clone, or sister, or lover.
My pick for male Oscar winner so far this year is Daniel Day-Lewis as an eccentric father of a precocious girl in The Ballad of Jack and Rose.I don't think the bard suggested incest on the menu for Prospero and Miranda, but in this ballad dad and daughter alone on a remote peninsula off the East coast are not fighting just real estate developers and dad's lovers, they are dealing with incestuous feelings so subtly relayed that even our delicately Christian president might not be offended.I have five beautiful daughters in the healthiest of relationships, but that a man alone with a bright, loving, free-spirited daughter could go to the dark side is the genius of this parable about the difficulties of living outside societal norms, which sometimes are fortunately restrictive of baser instincts.Day-Lewis's conflicted protagonist is a marvelous piece of acting, the best of his career, and the most interesting this year..
While Daniel Day Lewis and Catherine Keener are the marquee name anchors for the film the most delightful surprises come from Camilla Bell and Ryan McDonald who give honest and often very mature performances.
Unfortunately, the script I found cloying and weak and entirely unbelievable, it sidestepped the creepy incestuous moments that it evoked, and felt a little like watching a scene from a writers workshop at times.That being said- Daniel Day Lewis.
Director-screenwriter Rebecca Miller has a similar idea in mind here, as she has fashioned a story set in 1986 around the same inextricable bond between a 1960's drop-out Jack and his teenage daughter Rose on an isolated island.
She has an intriguing idea for the film's theme, the disillusionment of the idealism borne out of the 1960's anti-war movement and the encroachment of capitalism upon a former commune's idyllic setting.However, whereas Ozu uses narrative ellipses to let the story flow and lets the viewer respond emotionally, Miller does not reflect such an instinctive manner and has piled on soap opera conventions, heavy symbolism, a dominating soundtrack (lots of Bob Dylan) and lethargic pacing to add weight to her well-intentioned but significantly flawed 2005 movie.
That's unfortunate since we expect more from a film starring the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis (Miller's husband) as Jack and Catherine Keener as his sometime hippie-earth mother girlfriend, Kathleen.
Oddly, she plays a comic variation on a very similar role in this year's "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" and is wonderful in that.Camilla Belle is a lovely presence as Rose, and she does some strong work with the coming-of-age aspects of her character.
There are several performances in smaller roles worth mentioning - Ryan McDonald keenly aware as Kathleen's overweight, acerbic son, Rodney, who wants to be a hairdresser; Beau Bridges as the conciliatory land developer, Marty Rance; a surprisingly sensitive Jason Lee as a thoughtful gardener who bonds with Rose over their mutual love of flowers; and in the film's best performance, an almost unrecognizable Jena Malone as Rodney's wild-child friend, Red Berry.Occasionally there are scenes that surprise with their originality like the final encounter between Jack and Marty.
The Ballad of Jack and Rose reviewed by Sam Osborn rating: 2 out of 4United States, 2005 U.S. Release Date: 4/08/06 (limited) Running Length: 1:52 MPAA Classification: R (language, sexual content and some drug material)Director: Rebecca Miller Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener, Paul Dano, Ryan McDonald, Jena Malone Screenplay: Rebecca Miller Producer: Lemore Syvan Cinematography: Ellen Kuras Editing: Sabine Hoffmann Music: Michael Rohatyn U.S. Distributor: IFC FilmsIt's always been my philosophy that films aren't required to carry a message.
The father, Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis) lives on an island off the east coast of the United States on land that he set up in the seventies as a collective society for people who wanted to escape from the materialistic ways of a capitalist country.
So he brings in Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her boys, Thaddius (Paul Dano) and Rodney (Ryan McDonald), to live in the house and act as Rose's mother when he's passed.
Within the first five minutes of the film Jack (Daniel Day-Lewis), announces, tendentiously, to his daughter, Rose (Camilla Belle), a major theme of the film.
Shortly thereafter, Rose runs dramatically to her refuge in the woods following her father's attempt to discuss his state of health, and we know director/screenwriter Rebecca Miller has no fear of filmic cliché.There is not an honest line of dialog or credible emotion in this film.
Rebecca Miller directs Daniel Day-Lewis in 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose.' Sergio Castellitto debuts as director, starring with Penelope Cruz, in a movie made from his wife Margaret Mazzantini's novel, 'Non ti Muovere ('Don't Move').
Let's consider why.'The Ballad of Jack and Rose' is far less eventful than Castellitto's turbulent 'Don't Move.' It begins with a situation: Jack, a dying man (Day-Lewis) lives with a beautiful teenage daughter named Rose (the radiant Camilla Belle) on a defunct island commune, where Jack owns the property through an inheritance.
The undramatic, conventional developer, played simply but very well by Beau Bridges, may be the most solid and real of the whole cast of characters.There are weapons fired, things set fire to, bones broken, but 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose' is more a mood piece than a chronicle of events and while the mood is strong enough to make you feel stuck on that island, it just sort of fizzles out.
Day-Lewis's Scottish accent is so well done it sometimes seems to be all that's happening.Rebecca Miller likes to follow characters whose lives are spinning out of control (as in 'Personal Velocity'), and this time her movie is more like a whole, but it still doesn't go anywhere.
Unless you're a die-hard fan of failed hippie communes or of Daniel Day-Lewis, you shouldn't bother.As for 'Non ti Muovere' ('Don't Move'), Sergio Castellitto's collaboration with his wife Margaret Mazzantini to adapt her novel, see that film's entry elsewhere on this site for my fuller comment, but it's an excessive melodrama, though perhaps a more interesting film than 'The Ballad of Jack and Rose.' At any rate it gives both Castellitto and Cruz a chance to play the kind of all-out, soulful roles they may both have only dreamed of till now.
"Ballad of Jack and Rose" almost works as it examines the pitfalls of extreme idealism.Writer/director Rebecca Miller sets up an archetypal situation, of an isolated Utopian who thinks he can create and control a perfect living environment with his daughter.Daniel Day Lewis makes him too sympathetic, particularly his Pyrrhic politics, while his character's nemeses are too simplistic, even as he finally is defeated by mortality and human nature, or perhaps what some theologians would consider original sin.
M. Barrie in "Finding Neverland" in wanting innocent children to never grow up, even while indulging his own adult needs.As with "Personal Velocity," Miller well captures conversational dialog within broken families, particularly across genders, and she is uncannily good at giving us young and older teens, as puberty is presented here as a palpable enemy.Beau Bridges's good old boy developer is an overly stereotyped builder of ticky tacky McMansions; it would have been more interesting if he was threatening the wetlands with solar powered, energy recycling houses.The continuing image of poisonous snakes is a bit heavy-handed symbolism of women as the cause for the fall of Eden.
Jack visits the main land and invites Kathleen and her two sons to live with them to aid in these things.Roses quickly feels threatened by Kathleen and proceeds to behave in disturbing and unhealthy ways to show her protest.
His realization that Rose may have issues comes to little to late condemning her to a life of self seeking destruction as we see in the film.The true sadness of this film is not in the place the writer obviously wants it to be but in the fact that the writer actually seems to think there is some sort of romantic quality to the horrid parenting of Jack which creates a disturbed teenager with no visible means of creating a healthy future for her.I have been working with teens for nearly ten years now and I have seen how the selfishness of parents in attempts to keep their kids to themselves can create many problems for those teens.
The movie really falls apart at the end.Aside from Keener's less than mediocre performance, it was often difficult to understand what Daniel Day-Lewis, the father is saying, because of his heavy Scottish accent.
The film starts out very promising, an idyllic and relaxing flow through nature and natural housing that is habited by one ex-commune member Jack and his daugther Rose, alone in a world left with all the time to work and play and look at clouds in the sky.
'The Ballad of Jack and Rose' tells the story of an ailing radical, living a seemingly idyllic life with his daughter, but with his future threatened by the twin threats of development and his own impending mortality.
One of his lesser known roles was in the small independent film "The Ballad of Jack & Rose (2005) Directed by his wife Rebecca Miller.
It's a story about the relationship between a father and daughter living off the grid on an island off the east coast.Camilla Belle plays Rose the tomboyish teenage daughter who has spent her entire life on the island, sheltered from the rest of the world.
The beginning grabbed me and I felt like this was going to be a touching story, but as soon as Kathleen and her two sons came to move in with Jack and Rose, everything fell apart.
Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his young daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) live in blissful isolation on a former island commune off the east coast.
I don't usually like Dylan but a great song by him is included here -- "One More Cup of Coffee." Watch for it late in the story when Jack and Rose leave the island to confront the real estate developer.
Rarely have I ever seen such a union of head acting and intuitive acting in a single man, but by god he's got it, and his talent lends to Jack's character 100 times over.I was surprised by Camilla Belle's performance as Rose.
"The Ballad of Jack and Rose" (2005): Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Camilla Belle, Catherine Keener, Beau Bridges, Jason Lee, Paul Dano, Ryan McDonald, and Jena Malone.
Wishing to be free from the contemporary world, Jack and his teen-aged daughter Rose live virtually self-sufficiently and alone on a small island off the East Coast.However, all is not well in his utopia lately, as his health is failing rapidly and housing developments are beginning to encroach on his borders.
The result is a film of tenderness and dashed hopes and unconditional love between a father and daughter.Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a Scottish immigrant who mentally still lives in the 1960s, full of adoration of nature and the idealistic expectations of the Hippies reacting against a country at war with Vietnam.
Jack has heart failure and worries about the fate of his isolated Rose almost as much as he loathes the inevitable encroachment of land developers such as Marty Rance (Beau Bridges) who is building houses on the precious wetlands on the opposite side of Jack's island.Jack seeks to solve (control) problems: he invites his girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two sons Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano) to enlarge his family at the old commune, and he confronts Marty with threats that he will destroy the development project.
Jack reacts in rage then anguish at his failure to provide a secure, healthy future for Rose, and in time gives in to the developers and draws Rose back to him in a final scene that is one of the most touching farewells on film.Daniel Day-Lewis is so completely immersed in his character that he never for a moment loses our compassion.
Daniel Day-Lewis, a rare but welcome presence on our theatre screens, plays Jack, an aging hippie who lives with his daughter Rose (Camilla Belle, in a breathtaking performance) on an otherwise-deserted commune.
Day-Lewis gives a characteristically good performance, but the movie is, surprisingly, much more about Rose than Jack.
Good actors and good acting were not enough to save this movie.The Fathers intentions to become an anarchist hippy and enter a family into it; his intentions to remove his daughter from school at the age of 11 and try to teach her what HE thought were important tools for life for her; his intentions to keep her isolated from wicked society to the point where she was socially and morally stunted; his intentions of springing a nearly moral-free girlfriend and her two boys upon her (when she wasn't even aware that he had one)not because he loved the woman but because he needed someone who'd take care of his daughter when he died (he was ill), were all good intentions.
Daniel Day-Lewis is the Jack of the title, a hippie growing old with health problems, living on an expired commune-haven from the sixties on an island, now being encroached upon by developers.
Daniel is a gifted actor and here he brings intensity with an edge of desperation to the role.Camilla Belle (Rose) plays his look-alike daughter, whose hormones are starting to ignite and the only male she knows is her father who has home-schooled her.Jack is dying and inveigles and bribes his mistress from the mainland to come live on the island with himself and daughter.
It was well observed.But even idealist Jack occasionally needs to escape from his pristine world where he's raising his adoring daughter, for some mainland bonking with girl friend Kathleen (Catherine Keener), and he rashly invites her to come live with him, bringing her two teenage sons and her mainland expectations.
Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis) and is daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) have lived in solidarity in a commune on an island in the American East Coast.
There are times, perhaps best described as uncomfortable, when lenser Ellen Kuras makes her camera such an integral part of the setting with the characters that you feel like you're eavesdropping on these two families and their troubles."The Ballad of Jack & Rose" takes place in the year 1986 on an island off the East Coast of the United States.
It is clear that they have a very close relationship and, if they had not been father and daughter, we might wonder if they were lovers.Jack is a remnant of the 1960s free love and communal living group, and he and Rose are all that are left of the commune.
IFC produced indie gem with great, subtle acting and impressive novella-type narrative with characters as the film's focal point: to wit, former idealized hippie Jack Slavin (a never been better Daniel Day-Lewis) who lives with his tween daughter Rose (bewitched, beguiled and bewildered newcomer Camilla Belle) in their shared abandoned commune he created with her mother (who left them when she was very young) on a small remote e 'island off the East Coast of the United States' (as the beginning title card tells us over the amusing "I Put A Spell On You" by Creedence Clearwater Revival appropriately setting the tone).