The Deep End of the Ocean follows the story of a woman whose son is abducted in plain daylight. Years later, after relocating, her son appears on her doorstep, only without the knowledge that he is her son and has been abducted.
Three words come to mind when reviewing this film; emotional, tough, nuanced.
The film makes you feel for the family, and the kid who's had the rug pulled out from under him, and his (adoptive) dad. It's unimaginable. A horrifying thought and a parent's worst fear. It is a gut wrenching, heartbreaking scenario, and so much of Michelle Pfeiffer's performance conveyed that. Her movement in this performance was particularly eye-catching to me, as she physicalized the mother's grief through her slower movements and having a heavy centre of gravity, but slowly took on lighter movements and expressions as she began to heal.
She experiences losing herself after losing her child, only to find him two blocks away years later...I don't believe in coincidences. It wasn't a stranger who took him, and it rarely ever is, which is part of what makes it so horrifying. The film demonstrates that there can often be a masquerade of the atomic family, yet no one knows the truth. And there's layers to this, as so expertly told through the script. The abduction was not premeditated, or made out to be malicious, but Cecil (the woman who took Pfeiffer's son) was said to be very mentally unstable, which adds this new layer and complexity for the audience. The context makes the viewer more sympathetic to this character, while also understanding how wrong it was and how evidently sick she was. The film painted each character, even a kidnapper, with more nuance than simply being an archetype. An important point of the story being the boy not wanting to leave his "kidnapper", because it is so human for things to not wrap up neatly with a bow (at first anyways), but for things to go sideways first. There was a lot of turbulence to get to the "happy ending", and even then, sometimes your "happy ending" doesn't always look convential. I found it to be very human.
Gotta love Whoopi!
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