Reel Rundown: Actress Sally Field’s portrayal of grief is masterclass in ‘Remarkably Bright Creatures’
If there’s one thing that the actress Sally Field can do better than anything else, it involves her ability to cry on cue.
Of course, Field can do much more than just weep for the camera. She has, after all, won not just one but two Best Actress Academy Awards.
But it’s the 79-year-old Field’s skill at shedding tears that makes her the perfect person to play Tova Sullivan, the lead character in director Olivia Newman’s adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s novel “Remarkably Bright Creatures.” (The movie is streaming on Netflix.)
Tova is a widow who lives in the fictional town of Sowell Bay, which is said to be set on Puget Sound. She works as a night caretaker/janitor for the town’s aquarium, and she becomes close with one of the facility’s prize specimens: a giant Pacific octopus they have named Marcellus.
The conceit of both the novel and Newman’s adaptation is that Marcellus is particularly – and, yes, remarkably – intelligent. We know this because we are privy to his thoughts (voiced in the film by Alfred Molina).
We know, too, that Marcellus has figured out that Tova is grieving not just the loss of her husband from cancer but even more so that of her son Erik. It was he, then just a teenager, who disappeared mysteriously one night decades before while sailing. Marcellus wants to help Tova however he can.
Tova’s life becomes complicated when the 30-something Cameron Cassmore (Lewis Pullman) arrives in town. And to say Cameron arrives is understating the situation: His van, which he inherited from his recently deceased mother, breaks down just inside the town limits.
Fortunately, the breakdown occurs in front of the store owned by Ethan Mack (Colm Meaney), a garrulous kind of guy who immediately befriends the newcomer – and even ends up helping him find a job.
Cameron, it so happens, has a backstory every bit as the one affecting Tova. He’s come to Sowell Bay to find the man he thinks is his biological father. And he’s expecting to reap a financial reward that will help him fund his foundering rock band, cutely called Moth Sausage.
The job Cameron scores, it turns out, is Tova’s. Hampered by a sprained ankle, Tova needs the help. But as she says repeatedly, there’s a right way and wrong way to do things. Tova demands the job be done her way, and from the start the two clash in style and temperament.
Similar to your typical Lifetime network movie, then, this Netflix feature follows a simple format: Bring together a pair of troubled souls, and with the guidance provided by some outside force – in this case the octopus Marcellus – help them to heal each other’s emotional wounds.
And, too, much of the film’s plot depends on coincidences that are more convenient than realistic. Its strength, however, comes not just through the topics the film addresses, such as the angst of grief and the pains associated with aging, but also the performances of its cast.
Pullman, the son of veteran actor Bill Pullman, is fine as a man who grew up without support and is seeking some sense of an adult self. The Irish-born Meaney is a natural as Ethan.
And among Tova’s group of friends – played by Joan Chen, Beth Grant and Kathy Baker – it is Baker who manages to pull off the film’s single-most honest moment when she talks frankly about the fears of growing old and feeling alone.
Field, though, as she did in “Places in the Heart” and “Steel Magnolias,” shows her mastery not just at portraying grief but also the inner strength that allows her character to ultimately heal.
Then again, both she and Cameron do so with the help of Marcellus, a fact that – marked by one simple question – propels the film’s title into the arena of irony.
Just who are the remarkably bright creatures anyway?