The Light Between Oceans Is Headed for the Big Screen

One of the upcoming adaptations we’re most excited about is The Light Between Oceans, starring Michael Fassbender, Rachel Weisz, and Alicia Vikander (whom you might know from Ex Machina). While that cast is starry enough to lure anyone to the theater, those who’ve read M.L. Stedman’s 2012 novel have extra reasons to be excited.
The Story
Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander will play Tom and Isabel Sherbourne, a couple living on a remote island who one day find a boat washed ashore with a dead man and a living baby on board. The Sherbournes, who have been trying to conceive without success, decide to keep the baby. It’s only years later, when they make a rare visit to the mainland and encounter the child’s mother, played by Weisz, that the enormity of their decision hits home. This is material that fantastic actors like these dream of playing.
The Themes
There’s so much going on in The Light Between Oceans, it’s going to take all of our strength to resist elbowing the person sitting next to us at the theater and offering a running commentary on the role of the past, and Tom’s efforts to pretend you can leave it behind; the weight of isolation, and how it can make insane decisions seem sane; and the way our perceptions and assumptions change when we’re taken out of safe places and forced to encounter the larger world. It’s a powerful story of love and consequences—not to mention awe-inspiring wrath, after Tom is moved to confess their crime.
The Scenery
Anyone who has read this novel has pictured the savage beauty of Janus Rock, the remote island where Tom Sherbourne retreats with his young wife Isabel after World War I. The novel is filled with lush, primal descriptions of the ocean, the sky, and the island’s wild, untamed state. The island’s lighthouse is a character unto itself. Cinematographer Adam Arkapow proved his mettle with his spectacular work on True Detective, and we can’t wait to see how he brings the poetic descriptions to life on screen.
The Emotion
This is one of those stories that hits you in the chest. Tom’s suffering following his combat experiences, Isabel’s heartbreak over her miscarriages and desire for a baby, Hannah’s anguish as she wonders for years about the fate of her child and her husband—and all this before the final act, in which Hannah’s emotional reaction to the Sherbournes’ crimes climaxes in a heartrending offer to Isabel while Tom waits to see what his fate will be. We love books—and movies—that inspire real, raw emotions, and The Light Between Oceans adaptation is likely to be a three-hankie affair.