Anemone

“Day-Lewis Jr pays attention to his actors and frames them in ways that make monologues count but there’s a lot of unnecessary brooding about in between times.”
| Photo: Courtesy of POFF

Family tensions past and present pull the characters this way and that in Ronan Day-Lewis’ bleak feature debut, which has tempted his father Daniel, who also co-writes, out of retirement. On the surface of it, they’ve given him a meaty role as Ray, a former soldier who has been living off-the-grid for two decades after a traumatic event and whose life is upended by the arrival at his woodland home of his estranged brother Jem (Sean Bean). However, if you dig beneath Day-Lewis Snr’s powerful performance – matched, it must be said by Bean and Morton – there’s lean pickings in terms of narrative freshness or storytelling.

Jem is bringing a letter from Ray’s former lover Nessa (Samantha Morton) about their son Brian (Samuel Bottomley), who Ray walked out on before he was born and who Jem, having subsequently married Nessa, has raised as his own. It’s the sort of plotline that could have come from a soap opera and that’s perhaps why Day-Lewis junior is at pains to treat it as portentously as possible. Jem and Ray brood through the first half hour of their reunion, scarcely exchanging a word as the score from Bobby Krlic (otherwise known as the Haxan Cloak) throbs about in the background. Soon, however, the leaden skies become matched by leaden pacing, from which the film never breaks free.

It’s a side issue, admittedly, but even the setting feels off, with the rain-sodden forest greens of Wales not doubling very well for anyone who is familiar with the less lush and more rocky wilds of Yorkshire. For a more general audience, it’s the structure that will be more problematic. Day-Lewis and Bean may convey the bottled up agony of men who struggle to even know where to start when it comes to expressing emotion but the issues being dealt with feel like a checklist of the familiar – from PTSD to the Church to the Troubles.

Day-Lewis Jr pays attention to his actors and frames them in ways that make monologues count but there’s a lot of unnecessary brooding about in between times. Increasingly, he also can’t resist magic realist moments that feel included not because they add anything substantive to the emotional register but because the director thought they would look pretty cool. He’s right about that, at least, and demonstrates a strong visual flair but looks only take you so far when there’s no substance beneath. If there was an Oscar for most gratuitous use of a fairground, this would be a shoo-in.

Away from the brothers, the subplot involving Nessa and Brian pales in comparison, with the actors called on to deliver emotions that feel dropped in by the script rather than built up to. Spare a thought too for Safia Oakley-Green, doing excellent work as Brian’s friend in an underwritten role. While it’s great to see Day-Lewis back on screen and Morton, for that matter, who we should be treated to much more often on film, even they can’t stop this from becoming a slog over familiar terrain.

Reviewed on: 20 Nov 2025