Film Review - The Light Between Oceans

Our messy lives

For my lovely wife's birthday, we went to see the 2016 film, "The Light Between Oceans." Rotten Tomatoes gives it an unfair 59% (compared, for  example with 82% for another 2016 film, The Revenant.)

The film is about Tom, who, trying to forget the experiences of four bitter years spent in the first world war, ends up manning a remote light house loctaed "between two oceans".

Don't read on if you plan to see the film!

The Light between Oceans is a beautiful and moving film about the mess humans can so easily get themselves into. Many of the greatest themes of life in a fallen world are to be found here.....

Beautiful nature is not enough

So Tom ends up on the lonely island of Janus Rock.  Although he is surrounded by spectacular natural beauty he is desperately lonely because inanimate creation is not enough to satisfy or heal his broken soul. He falls in love and marries Isabel (from the mainland) who joins him on the island. 

The beast and the beauty

But all of the joys of this passing life are marred by the fall, and two miscarriages later, Isabel is depressed and down-hearted. One day a small boat is blown onto the lighthouse rocks. On board is a baby and the child's dead young father. Tom knows that the rules of the lighthouse demand he records this event and calls in help, but desperate to make his bereaved wife happy he buries the dead father and colludes with his wife to pretend the baby belongs to them.... 

The union of husband and wife in crime

Truth may not always to be found in a married couple, for love often blinds them and then binds them. Tom's conscience says one thing, his love for his wife says another, and instead of standing up for the truth, he agrees with the deception and thus begins a life founded on a big fat lie....

You can't live a lie for long 

....but conscience won't long abide a lie. When happy grandparents congratulate the couple, it's hard to hide the moral short-circuiting going on in their heads. When the baby is christened, it's hard to hear words that imply the child is their own. Faces contort as consciences are pricked. What is worse, Tom hears about the true story of the child and its father: one day, after a period of bullying, the father took his baby daughter and set off on the open ocean leaving behind his wife. All assumed father and child had died at sea, but Tom upon hearing of the intense grieving of the widow writes her an anonymous note to say that the father was "in the hands of God" and the child was safe. This begins a police search for the baby which will lead to the arrest of Tom and his wife....

Be sure your sins will find you out

Tom and Isabel's sins are found out because of the note Tom wrote. One sin leads to another: Tom in his desire to protect his wife from punishment lies to say he was wholly responsible for the cover-up. And then, when the heat is on, Isabel, out of her love for Tom admits her part in the cover-up; it looks like they'll both be locked away.

Forgiveness "heals"

The true mother forgives the couple and their sentence is reduced and here, at last, is where some measure of redemption takes place in the story.  It seems as though she brings up the baby without bitteness or rancour because many years later as an adult, Grace visits Tom, Isabel having passed away. The death of one father leaves one wife bereaved, but the deceit of a couple, in their desperation to have children, bring misery to four people. Sin spreads, sin has consequences, and what tragic webs of sorrow sin weaves in our lives.

Unwinding the tangled web

Suppose we could go back in time, suppose, for a moment, a wife grieving over two miscarriages is comforted and strengthened by her husband against a temptation to take a baby not her own (for to do what is right is always better than to do what feels best). Suppose the husband lovingly stood up to his wife and reported the missing baby. A grieving mother would have been reunited with her baby, four years of seared conscience avoided and many long years of sorrow in the lives of four people prevented.

It sounds like I think The Light Between Oceans is a real-life story! These themes are so close to the tangled webs we weave that it could very easily be a real life story, from which only the saving grace of God can heal and restore.