The Light Between Oceans

Despite its tear-jerking tendencies, it’s clear that The Light Between Oceans aspires to be more than just a simple weeper about love, loss and lighthouses.

This technically proficient romantic period piece about isolation, grief and guilt has a certain ambitious poignancy yet misses an opportunity to become more edgy and provocative.

The story takes place near the end of World War I, when Tom (Michael Fassbender) takes a job as a lighthouse keeper on an otherwise uninhabited Australian island, where he welcomes the isolation after years of serving in the military.

Later, he meets Isabel (Alicia Vikander), a young lady from a nearby town, and soon they’re married. However, their efforts to start a family on the desolate island result in two miscarriages and further despair.

Soon afterward, the couple has chance encounters with both a lost baby and a grieving widow (Rachel Weisz), each of who will change their lives forever.

Fassbender (Steve Jobs) elevates the material with a nicely understated performance. Behind his character’s lack of verbal expression are subtle glances and body language that convey plenty of emotion. He generates a reasonable chemistry with Vikander (The Danish Girl) that apparently extended off-camera, as well, despite an age difference of more than a decade.

Although it’s evocative of time and place — including the harsh climate and the wartime backdrop — the film ventures into Nicholas Sparks territory (albeit not in contemporary North Carolina), where aggressive sentimentality trumps any meaningful glimpse into a relationship that’s severely tested.

The screenplay by director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine), based on a novel by M.L. Stedman, bogs down in exposition before the second hour ratchets up the narrative urgency and moral complexity. About what, exactly, it’s difficult to mention without the need to reveal spoilers.

Suffice it to say, the film winds itself into a central dilemma that’s mildly intriguing but not worth all the trouble it took to get there. It somehow remains emotionally distant — we can see their devotion to one another much more than we can feel that commitment.

As a result, The Light Between Oceans fails to illuminate the depth of the inner turmoil of its central characters, who instead become lost in a melodramatic fog.

Rated PG-13, 132 minutes.