Publication Date: 10-14-2025

The Light Between Oceans (2016) review

Dir. Derek Cianfrance

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

Tom (Michael Fassbender) is an anxious, antisocial World War I veteran who works as a lightkeeper at a lighthouse off the coast of Australia. For the opening minutes of The Light Between Oceans, we peacefully, in an introduction that treads impressionistic waters, look at Tom’s life almost as not to disturb him from the comfortable microcosm that he tries to make for himself. Eventually, however, his isolation is interrupted once he meets and marries the beautiful Isabel (Alicia Vikander). Their marriage is tested when Isabel fails to make it through two pregnancies within a short amount of time, stricken with the fear that she may never become a mother, something she’s dreamed about her entire life.

That’s when Tom and Isabel discover a boat containing a corpse and a newborn baby girl off the coast of their humble abode. Torn between the plan to report the body to the authorities and turn the baby over to an orphanage or act on their own, sentimental judgment, the couple choose the latter, burying the body and raising the girl, whom they name Lucy.

Tom then sees Hannah Roennfeldt (Rachel Weisz) at a grave bearing the names of Frank and Grace, with a notation that says the two were lost at sea the same day him and Isabel found and named Lucy. Guilt prompts Tom to write to Hannah saying that despite her husband’s death, their child is being nurtured and cared for safely following his death. Such a thing sends Tom and Isabel into living a quiet life with their bundle of joy until Hannah turns up again and secrets reveal themselves over the course of the film slowly but surely.

The Light Between Oceans is actually a very good film for about twenty minutes as it almost superbly conveys the isolation Tom experiences in mindset and locational proximity from everyone else in the world. When Isabel entertains the mix, she provides him an emotional outlet that begins to steer the film into melodramatic territory only heightened by Hannah and Rachel Weisz’s overwrought performance of the woman. Couple that with a score that reminds you what to feel and when to feel it at the most frustrating moments, the film disregards any kind of subtlety and gentle craft it constructed within the opening minutes to make something that’s more communicable to a mass audience.

The melodramatic edge of the film is masked under otherwise pretty good performances, particularly from Fassbender, who brings that mild, observant quality to Tom that he has made a trademark of some of his best roles. While the film is tonally and narratively incomparable to perhaps his best work in Steve McQueen’s Shame, Fassbender comes close to echoing the vacant, empty stares and occasionally powerless gaze as he soon finds himself stuck in a helpless situation that all stemmed from trying desperately hard to do the right thing. In addition, Vikander works very well in a role that doesn’t sideline her as an archetypal female lead too often.

The Light Between Oceans has a surprisingly entertaining second act even when compared to its more impressive and interesting first. It’s entertaining in the same way an episode of Jerry Springer is comfort TV, but with all the trashiness and overblown theatrics of domestic warfare removed. But even as the drama begins to surmount the film’s originally meditative premise, one can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened had this film outgrown its destiny as a bestselling book that’s little more than “beach-read” and manifested itself into something harrowing and gripping.

I’m a firm believer in judging what movies are or what they strive to be rather than getting hung up on “what ifs” and details regarding what they could’ve been, but The Light Between Oceans squanders a very good idea and approach that I cannot get passed. The film was directed by Derek Cianfrance, who helmed The Place Beyond the Pines several years ago, an intriguing, if imperfect, triptych that housed a lot of good ideas and solid performances within a mostly gripping premise. Cianfrance both takes a step forward and a step back with The Light Between Oceans, narrowing his focus and undermining its potential by ostensibly trying to remain competitive with the still marginally lucrative Nicholas Sparks platform, only this time with a darker twist (which still finds ways to be vague as in the motives behind where exactly the father was taking the baby).

Fassbender and Vikander, I must reiterate, are both strong players, and the film’s photography (done by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw, who worked on Fassbender’s Macbeth) is equally moody and attractive. The latter wouldn’t feel as much like a fallback if the film’s narrative was consistent from the start. Its desire to, at one point, try and be a slowburn picture with serious moments of embellished and manufactured emotion create friction as opposed to harmony, and though there are debatably as many good moments in this film as underwhelming ones through its 132 minute runtime, it’s still ultimately too tonally problematic to warrant a broad recommendation.

Starring: Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz. Directed by: Derek Cianfrance.