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The Shipping News
An emotionally-beaten man with his young daughter moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland to reclaim his life.
2001 · Directed by Lasse Hallström · 111 min · Drama · Romance · Screenplay in the scene database · 4 frames
Tagline
Dive beneath the surface.
Plot
When Quoyle was a young boy, his father Guy tossed him into a lake, expecting him to swim naturally. Images of flailing in water and nearly drowning often resurface in Quoyle's memory when he is under stress.
Quoyle, now an ink setter at a small newspaper in Poughkeepsie, New York, lives a lonely life. He becomes infatuated with and marries a vivacious local woman named Petal. She is an unfaithful wife and negligent mother to their six-year-old daughter, Bunny. Petal runs off with a lover, taking Bunny with her. Soon after, Petal and her boyfriend are killed in a car accident. The police return Bunny to Quoyle, informing him that Petal had sold her to a black market adoption operation for $6,000.
Shortly before those events, Quoyle's elderly parents die by suicide together. Quoyle's aunt, Agnis Hamm, arrives to pay her respects to her late half-brother, though her real motive is to steal Guy's ashes (which she later dumps down an outhouse hole and urinates on). Agnis is moving to the ancestral family home in Newfoundland, which has been abandoned for 44 years. She agrees to stay a few more days to help Quoyle through his recent turmoil, then persuades him to move to Newfoundland with her.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Robert Nelson Jacobs
- Cinematography: Oliver Stapleton
- Edited by: Andrew Mondshein
- Music: Christopher Young
- Production design: David Gropman
- Produced by: Linda Goldstein Knowlton, Irwin Winkler, Leslie Holleran, Rob Cowan
Cast
- Kevin Spacey as Quoyle
- Julianne Moore as Wavey Prowse
- Cate Blanchett as Petal
- Judi Dench as Agnis Hamm
- Pete Postlethwaite as Tert Card
- Scott Glenn as Jack Buggit
- Rhys Ifans as Beaufield Nutbeem
- Gordon Pinsent as Billy Pretty
- Jason Behr as Dennis Buggit
- Kate Moennig as Grace Moosup
Production
- Country: United States of America
- Language: English
- Studios: Miramax
- Budget: $38,000,000
- Box office: $24,690,441
- Themes: adultery, based on novel or book, isolation, kidnapping, fishing, newfoundland and labrador, survival, reporter, drunk
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