On Chesil Beach is a film adaptation of an Ian McEwan novel, which I have not read, starring Saorise Ronan as Florence and Billy Howle as Edward, a young, awkward married couple on their honeymoon. As they try to engage each other, the film depicts some of their conversations with nonlinear flashbacks whereas other flashbacks reveal why a character may have a specific reaction to certain stimuli. The flashbacks show their lives separately and together until the movie returns to the beach then it progresses linearly with no further flashbacks.
I decided not to see On Chesil Beach in theaters because there seemed to be a glut of Ronan movies out at the same time. (It was only one other movie, The Seagull, so my impression was incorrect.) I love Ronan, especially after Lady Bird, one of my favorite movies of 2017, but not enough to want to pay to see all her movies. Also May seemed to have a lot of period drama movies with majority white casts (Death of Stalin, First Reformed, Chappaquiddick, Beirut), which is fine because not every movie is made for me, and I can’t live at the theaters. None of them had a hook that sufficiently distinguished them in terms of excellence from each other or focused on a subject that appealed to me enough to throw my coins at them so they ended up cancelling each other out. So I decided to put the ones that interested me in my queue for home viewing.
On Chesil Beach had an additional strike against it. I’m socially awkward so I didn’t want to watch a movie and have second hand embarrassment, which is worse than a horror movie for me. Give me a deranged killer any day. When I finally did watch the movie, I was a little concerned at the beginning of the movie that I made a big mistake in ultimately deciding to devote any time to the movie because the couple was initially overwhelmingly annoying to me, which is the point, but they surpassed even my levels of acceptable dysfunction. Stop talking about babies when you haven’t even had sex yet. You don’t need to sit down to take off flats!
At one hundred ten minutes, On Chesil Beach’s nonlinear narrative is more than a gimmick, but provides a helpful way to compare and contrast the awkward, inward facing pair with the vibrant, joyful, determined and ambitious couple and individuals that they were. As a viewer, I needed a break from the married couple and wanted to understand how such an obvious mismatch occurred, but the flashbacks make it obvious that it is actually the reverse. They seemed perfect until the honeymoon so the whole movie becomes a psychological mystery of how things could go so wrong. I hate whodunits, but I love psychological profiles and studies so I became more engaged as the movie unfolded.
On Chesil Beach is a great character study. While it is obvious that we are influenced by our childhood, it is less obvious how those influences will emerge when we become adults able to act autonomously outside our homes. Florence is more instilled with a conservative streak than she is conscious of or even wants to be. Edward’s coping mechanism in the face of naked vulnerability is either isolation or lashing out. They end up in their isolated shame corners and play the Biblical Adam and Eve blame game when they no longer can speak freely as they once could. They assign too much shame to the first bump (or lack thereof) in the road and because they are unable to completely self-examine the origins of that shame, they shut down in different ways-flight or fight.
Florence and Edward initially come together because neither of them was at home at home. Their words formed an ephemeral home for them to share. Despite Florence’s horror at being a literal doorway, she actually is an emotional, metaphorical doorway by creating a space for Edward to be at home and destroy the separation that he cultivated with his family. It helps that the artistic spirit is alive in Edward’s home. She is comfortable with insanity and messiness then gently restoring order, which suggests that with time, she could do the same for herself if Edward could be a doorway to permit her to enter her life and see it in a new way; however he is incapable of reciprocating or recognizing other people’s shame at their circumstances as momentary victims and misreads it as disapproval of him, which is initially revealed in an alley scene, and I played that scene two times.
I have no idea if it is obvious to everyone who watched or read On Chesil Beach, but Edward does not want to be anything like his father, who is basically perfect, or have a marriage in which he has to take care of a psychologically challenged partner, which is understandable because not everyone, men or women, are suited to be caretakers. When he encounters others’ psychological roadblocks, he isolates himself or fights. He may reference marriage vows, but he rejects sickness and worse. He just wants to be a normal couple, and there is no such thing. Unlike Florence, when he enters her home, he does not even seem to discern that anything is wrong. The only thing that he resonates with him in Florence’s home is Florence. Even if he could not be a doorway, he could have potentially shared his coping skill of separation and escape to aid Florence in her relationship with her family, but he is blinded by his insecurities, particularly about what kind of a man that he wants to be. By rejecting his father’s display of masculinity and drawn to, but unable to sustain the intellectual display of masculinity as exhibited by his friend, he sadly does not leave himself many options which will actually benefit him.
I loved the vicar, who could see this coming a mile away. I enjoyed it when On Chesil Beach started moving forward in a linear narrative, but apparently it isn’t faithful to the book; however McEwan wrote the screenplay so shrug. If others criticized it as too convenient and twee, I think that would be a fair criticism, but I still enjoyed it. This movie is the fourth film adaptation that I’ve seen of McEwan’ work: Atonement, The Comfort of Strangers and Enduring Love. I still don’t feel compelled to read his books yet. I enjoyed the movie. It was beautifully shot and perfectly acted with a special shout out to Anne-Marie Duff, who always does a great job in any film that she is in. Apparently I’ve seen Howle before in Dunkirk and The Sense of an Ending, but I have no memory of him. While he was wonderful, it is unfortunate that through no fault of his own, he reminds me of a lesser version of Eddie Redmayne.
I would recommend On Chesil Beach, but it isn’t so great that it is a must see film except for fans of McEwan or Ronan. I think that it is suitable for all audiences, but the central problem is navigating sex so consider yourself warned.