The underbaked, yet overburdened drama Anemone is proof that great performances and flowery, flowing prose don’t always make for a great movie. More of a writing and acting exercise for the father-son duo of Ronan and Daniel Day-Lewis than a fully realized project, Anemone has brilliant moments that get lost amid a lot of flashy dross. What could’ve been a poignant look at a family divided in different ways by generational traumas instead emerges as a muddled mess where people talk a lot, but those words never lead to tangible, interesting actions. It’s certainly a heartfelt project that has been able to bring the elder Day-Lewis out of acting retirement, but while it makes good use of his talents as a performer, it also puts his shortcomings as a scenarist on full display.
Anemone sets its period and stage with childlike drawings depicting The Troubles in Ireland before shifting to the perspective of stoic former military man Jem Stoker (Sean Bean), who’s about to embark on a solitary mission that he wouldn’t be going on if it wasn’t somewhat of an emergency. Jem is off to find his brother, Ray (Day-Lewis), a reclusive hermit living somewhere in the Northern English woods. Upon arrival, neither brother is thrilled to see each other, but Ray extends a modicum of hospitality to his estranged sibling. Jem has come to try and convince Ray to come back to civilization. Jem has been caring for his brother’s former partner, Nessa (Samantha Morton), who was abandoned by Ray while she was pregnant. The now adult son that Ray never met, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), looks to be making some of the same life mistakes as his father, and Jem thinks that bringing them together for a heart-to-heart is the only way to help.
That’s easier said than done, given Ray’s fiercely isolated nature and untreated traumas, and most of Anemone is nothing more than extended conversations and long silences between the brothers, with a few asides to check in on what’s going on with Nessa and Brian, with them getting a few soliloquies of their own. Anemone has been designed as a stripped bare actors’ showcase, with Ronan Day-Lewis directing the action from a script co-written alongside his father. It’s a film that certainly has a love for great performance and the power of that well written dialogue can hold, but everything else about Anemone is frustratingly half-hearted.
None of the characters in Anemone are being truthful to theirselves or to each other until almost the very end, when the acting Day-Lewis gets what feels like his fifth grand, unbroken speech. Even then, there were earlier bouts of cocksure grandstanding from the character that cast doubt upon whether or not these traumatic revelations are truthful. It’s electrifying to watch Daniel Day-Lewis and old pros like Bean and Morton getting a chance to breathlessly crank out pages and pages of dialogue without breaking a sweat, but Anemone is all wind-up and no release. For a film where people are routinely getting riled up and stuck in their own selfish feelings, Anemone doesn’t amount to very much.
The similarities between the father and son characters on screen are only skin deep, and the dialogues conducted about their relationship offer no enlightenment beyond a similar tendency towards malaise, and as an examination of the scars left behind by the Irish troubles, this is about as basic of a metaphor as one can get. Bean’s character emerges as nothing more than a sounding board and conduit to a greater story, and although she speaks eloquently and humanely, Morton’s character is not much more than a means to an end. And the character the film truly revolves around, Bottomley’s troubled son, is given a threadbare girlfriend (Safia Oakley-Green) who speaks more to his mum than to him, and is robbed of almost all agency and inner feeling. He’s a plot point and not a fleshed out human being.
But Ronan Day-Lewis’ visual panache and the cast’s acting chops almost wrestle a mild recommendation out of Anemone. That is, until the stunningly miscalculated, hokey metaphysical leaning ending, which unsuccessfully apes the styles of Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson at the same time. Astute viewers will be able to pinpoint exactly the two movies Anemone’s conclusion are indebted to (hint: just look and think about the title of this one), and the eye-rolling that ensues will likely cause whiplash in some. Instead of being somewhat artful or emotionally affecting, the end of Anemone borders on laughable. It’s certainly a big, capital-C CHOICE, but when the rest of the film doesn’t give the viewer any reason to care about such a big swing, then what was the point? If you’re looking for great performances that exist in a vacuum, Anemone could hold some value. If you’re looking for a point, you’ve come to the wrong place.
Anemone opens in theatres everywhere on Friday, October 3, 2025.
