People are voting emotionally.

Absolutely Fantastic

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Dull and more dull. I expected so much more from this team. About as interesting as watching other people's home movies of that self-catering weekend they spent on that deserted island.

Tom Sherbourne, traumatised on the western front, takes a job as lighthouse keeper on an island off a remote part of the Australian coast. Local young woman Isabel marries him, joins him on his island, but has two miscarriages. Immediately after the second, a dinghy containing a dead man and a live baby washes up on the lighthouse island: Isabel persuades Tom not to report it and to pass off the baby as their own, so he buries the body. At the baby's christening back on the mainland he encounters the child's real mother and finds himself vastly conflicted.I usually start by considering the things I liked about a film: here I have to start with what I didn't like and, what I disliked most was the story. There is an expression in British theatre called "plonking" - when the script introduces an element which is obviously solely for the purpose of justifying something which will happen later, it has been "plonked" down in front of the audience. This story is full of plonks. The lighthouse being on an island, the dinghy arriving at the same time as the second miscarriage, the baby's father being German, the mother being at the church at the same time as the christening, the rattle a) being seen by a visitor to the island and b) being small enough to fit in an envelope, her father being wealthy enough to fund a reward about the rattle - all these, and others, are clumsy mechanisms which exist only in order to fit the story together. The reasons for them existing are so obvious that the story appears gracelessly cobbled together rather than organically grown.Added to which, the two main characters, their motivations and actions, are hugely improbable. It may be that the novel does a better job of filling in detail here, but it seems that (for instance) Isabel falls in love with Tom because he took her for a picnic and has an air of melancholy about him. Well, I suppose people have got married for less, but still... These two individuals are more story contrivance than characters.The pacing is all wrong, too. Starting out as a romance, it turns out that it is no such thing: the first hour is all set-up for the actual drama of the second half, and could - and should - have been trimmed.Turning to more positive aspects, Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander are both wonderful actors, and they do an exemplary job - better than the story deserves - of fleshing out these two cardboard cut-outs into living, breathing, halfway-credible people. Rachel Weisz is adequate as the mother.The look of the film is good: the desolate beauty of the isolated lighthouse island is beautifully photographed, and the direction is broadly good, too, albeit the pacing issues can be laid at the feet of writer/director Derek Cianfrance.The mature ladies in the audience who were there because they'd read the book all snuffled dutifully at the end of two hours of blatant emotional manipulation: I fear I remained resolutely unmoved.Looking on the bright side, Fassbender and Vikander became an Item during the filming: think on that as your attention wanders.

These two character were insane. I just cannot figure out who was more insane the woman who wanted to keep another woman's baby or the husband that enabled her to do so. You find a baby in a dingy with a dead man but never think of all the possibilities of why they were there. Maybe the dead man was a kidnapper and the real mother was going nuts looking for her baby or the actual story... a man who dies while in the dingy, for whatever reason, with his baby. There could have been a thousand explanations but these idiots decide to keep their dirty little secret. Who would do that? How come they never heard of this dead man until that day in the church cemetery? Wouldn't a tragedy like that have been front page news on the mainland especially being that the mother of the baby was from a wealthy notable family? And didn't these two on the island come in contact with folks form the mainland periodically? Whew!I found the story annoying and I wanted to smack the female character who stole another woman's baby for completely selfish reasons.

From the ultra-close face shots very reminiscent of those of Carl Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' to the tender chemistry between the two main characters to the fantastic acting of the 4-year-old version of the orphan, this film deserves the highest rating that can be given. This is, in a way, a chick flick, but in a far deeper way it is a study of right and wrong and how a seemingly innocent decision, designed to alleviate a destructive psychic pain, can set into motion events which spiral out of control and involve many more people than were originally considered. Too, if you love stories set during the Great War, or stories about lighthouses, this one was filmed with you in mind. The limits of true love and marital commitment are put to the test with seeming betrayal and unfounded suspicions--and on a broader scale we see the Christ willing to die in the place of His spouse Humanity after He has been wrongly condemned by her suspicious mind which did not grasp His love for her to the letter of his marriage vow-- which promised her 'better, or worse, 'til death do us part'.