Most
of The Shipping News takes place in the spectacular
setting of frigid Newfoundland, but the original venue is
Poughkeepsie, where the father of Quoyle (played by Kevin
Spacey) has recently died. Voiceovers at the very beginning
inform filmviewers that Quoyle was a disappointment to his
father in many ways, for example being unable to swim immediately
after being dropped into a lake. As an inksetter for a local
newspaper, nevertheless, Quoyle is satisfied with a less demanding
job, since he believes that he is not very bright, and we
might mistake his faltering speech for some mental retardation.
His rocky marriage to promiscuous Petal Bear (played by Cate
Blanchett), another reason for his timorousness, ends when
she dies in an auto accident while en route on a fling with
her umteenth boyfriend, leaving Quoyle as the sole parent
of their daughter Bunny. After Agnis Hamm (played by Judi
Dench) knocks on his door in pursuit of his father’s
cremated remains, she substitutes sand for his ashes while
Quoyle’s back is turned so that she can carry out a special
ceremony when she returns to Newfoundland, her birthplace
-- and the birthplace of Quoyle’s father. Agnis persuades
Quoyle to accompany her to Newfoundland along with Bunny,
a common scenario for those who want to spend their golden
years by reconnecting with the location of their birth. Upon
arriving at the ancestral home on a promontory above a beautiful
bay, Agnis takes the ashes to the outhouse, deposits them
below, and proceeds to defecate on them, clearly the most
amusing scene among many that serve to lighten the tragic
mysteries and realities as they unfold throughout the rest
of the film. Quoyle, seeking employment at the local newspaper
in his craft as inksetter, is instead hired as a news reporter.
He is assigned to two beats -- car wrecks and ship movements.
Having been led to believe that he has no talent as a writer,
he at first protests of his incompetence, but in time his
schooling in journalism by a colleague brings him up to the
mark, consistent with the pedagogical theory that everyone
can rise to a higher potential if only challenged and encouraged.
As the film progresses, the weather takes quite a toll, including
the loss of the ancestral home and deaths of a few fishermen
at sea. Quoyle begins to fall in love with a widow, Wavey
Prouse (played by Julianne Moore), and the mystery of Agnis’s
contempt for his father revealed -- he raped his sister. The
moral seems to be that the harsh weather drives everyone to
extremes, but rape was too extreme, even for Newfoundlanders,
thus explaining his exile in Poughkeepsie. Nevertheless, adultery,
beheadings, double suicides, arson, and the memory of the
Quoyle ancestors as pirates also haunt the story. Directed
by Lasse Hallström, The Shipping News is
based on the novel by E. Annie Proulx, but has far less social
significance than Hallström’s earlier
Snow Falling on Cedars (1999) and Chocolat
(2000). MH
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