Why the Weight of Water Film Failed But is Still Worth Watching

SMUTTYNOSE MURDERS

The arrival of the film version of the novel Weight of Water in 2003 was a big event in the little city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The island ax murder on which it was based happened here in 1873. It’s two victims are buried in the local cemetery. Our reaction to the Hollywood version of this local story follows. Here’s how it went down.

The SmuttynoSe Murder Movie -- A Local View

EDITOR'S NOTE: Initially planned for release in 2000, the long-awaited film version of WEIGHT OF WATER was panned by critics and all but abandoned by its distributor, the film finally arrived in its hometown of Portsmouth, NH in 2003. At the request of the NH Gazette, SeacoastNH.com attended the showing and responded to questions about the murder, the novel and the film. Robinson and his wife are among a dozen pairs of Smuttynose Island stewards who oversee the island for its owners each summer. (All photos (c) Lion's Gate Films)

SEE WHAT the critics said in 2003

What happened to the film "Weight of Water"?

It bombed. After its premier in Toronto two years ago, the Kathryn Bigelow film didn’t resonate with audiences and went back into the can, which often happens with films. Some never reappear. Some go directly to video. This one was distributed in Europe and finally resurfaced for a half-hearted showing by Lion’s Gate Films on 27 screens last November. The critics hammered at it again. The $16 million production netted $45,888 at its reopening according to Internet Movie Database. So far, according to film web site, it has yet to gross a quarter of a million domestically. Right now you can rent it on VHS in Greece or buy a DVD on eBay shipped from China, but you can’t see it anywhere else.

How did you first see it?

It played for two days at the Portsmouth Music Hall in 2003. Kathryn Bigelow and author Anita Shreve would have been proud. The 850-seat theater was filled to the rafters both days at $8 per ticket. It was, according to the Music Hall, the most profitbale film ever shown there. The second night people were turned away at the door. A number of us had hoped for a US premier in Portsmouth – since the film is about local history – but nothing came of that effort. When Lion’s Gate finally released it in November 2002, despite requests, the Portsmouth Music Hall initially said it would never run a film of "that" quality – a burst of snobbery that almost scuttled the showing. But the Music Hall relented when the story got into the newspapers, and ate a little crow when patrons lined up at the door. I assumed that everyone attending knew the backstory, but the kids behind me in the theatre were clueless that the film had been a best-selling novel, and had never heard of the Isles of Shoals, just 10 miles from the theater where they were sitting.

Was "Weight" worth the wait?

It was for me. Many of us who know the history and Smuttynose Island well wanted to see how Anita Shreve’s novel would play out on the big screen with stars like Sean Penn and Elizabeth Hurley. Moreso, we wanted to see the 19th century crime, on which both the novel and film are based, fleshed out on a big budget Hollywood-style. This is a haunting tale. As Smuttynose stewards, my wife and I spend a week each year alone on Smuttynose Island, a few feet from the site of the murder. One of my chores is to clear the grass from around the stone foundation of the "murder" house. I was hoping the film would give me a clearer visual picture of what happened there in 1873 – and it did that extremely well.

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Seacoast Review of Weight of Water

Does the movie work?

I have to agree with the critics generally and say "no". Other than the superb reconstruction of the events leading up to the Smuttynose crime, the film never comes together. Half of the film takes place in modern times and those characters, including Sean Penn, are wooden and unbelievable. The sexy scenes were so silly that audience members actually giggled. When Penn tries to seduce his wife among the shelves of the Portsmouth Courthouse archives, the giggling turned to guffaws. The ending of the film, where all the pieces from the two eras should come together, is loud and chaotic, but unsatisfying. After setting up two elaborately plotted stories, it was as if an angry hand simply knocked the whole complex construction down. The final storm is supposed to be symbolic and cathartic. It was neither.

So it’s not worth seeing?

I didn’t say that. In fact, most of the people I spoke to said they were glad they attended the film. Sometimes an imperfect work of art can be perfectly fascinating. The original premise of the novel, the cinematography, the costumes, the detailed reconstruction of Smuttynose island and the Hontvet "murder" house, some of the author’s literary symbolism, the acting of the Norwegian cast (especially Sarah Poley as Maren) – all these pieces are, to my mind, extraordinary. If Hurley had been less openly seductive, and Penn replaced by an older more-motivated actor, and the hurly-burly finale less blustery -- this thing might have worked. Audiences are, I think, less in need of Fisher-Price plot motivation than Hollywoode screenwriters think. We get it. When you hammer the point home too hard, we feel tricked and disappointed.

What is the real story of the Smuttynose Murders?

In 1873 Louis Wagner, a Prussian immigrant living in Portsmouth, stole a boat and rowed to the Isles of Shoals to rob the house of a fisherman living on Smuttynose Island. Wagner knew that his former boss John Hontvet would not be home that night because they had met in Portsmouth. Honvet told Wagner that the train delivering his bait was late, forcing him and his brother-in-law Evan to leave their wives Maren and Anethe alone on the island. Wagner knew that John had been saving up for a new boat. He knew the island well because he had worked for John and lived in the house. What Wagner didn’t know was that Karen, Maren’s sister had been fired from her job working for Celia Thaxter’s family at the Appledore Hotel. Karen was sleeping in the kitchen of the house and cried out when Wagner entered the house. In a panic, Wagner hit Karen with a chair, then killed Anethe outdoors with ax as she tried to escape. Wagner returned and strangled Karen, but Maren escaped. It was Maren’s deposition that convicted Wagner who, though he denied the crime, was hanged in Alfred, Maine two years later just before the state abolished the death penalty.

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Seacoast Review of Weight of Water

How is the novel "Weight of Water" different?

Fascinated by the Smuttynose story, bestselling author Anita Shreve used much of the historical detail, including authentic dialogue from Wagner’s trial transcript and Maren’s deposition. Shreve’s contemporary protagonist Jean James visits Smuttynose on a photography assignment, and comes to the conclusion that Maren, not Wagner, committed the crime. While researching the story at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, Jean James finds and purloins a lost letter by Maren confessing to the crime. The plot moves back and forth between the 1873 tale and the story of five people on a sailboat. Jean is sailing with her husband, a Pulitzer Prize winning poet, her young daughter, the poet’s brother and his sexy girlfriend. Both stories come together at the end in a stormy conclusion.

Is the film faithful to the novel?

Very much so. You can tell because the Smuttynose history, the best part of the novel, shines through clearly to become the best part of the movie. The contemporary story on the yacht is compressed a little to 17 hours. That helps make that part of the tale especially contrived. The main character’s daughter is largely left out of the movie plot, allowing for more sexual teasing between Hurley and Penn. That, I think, was a really bad decision. The Penn-Hurley relationship, more than anything, hurts the film. IT is lackluster, contrived and just stupid. The presence of the daughter, as Anita Shreve imagined the story, would have softened things. Viewers I talked to were confused by the two plots, but this is the way the novel moves too. The back and forth is confusing in the text too. Shreve did a nice job of comparing the crowded house on Smuttynose in winter to the cramped space on the yacht in summer. Features like that worked well. The comparison between the erupting psychology of Maren and Jean James, however, didn’t work for me in the book or in the novel. It may be sexist, but over the years I find women, they liked the novel or not, all finished the book. Most men I know abandoned it after reading only a couple of chapters.

Is the novel faithful to history?

This is the stickiest point of all. The novel starts out reciting chapter and verse from the Isles of Shoals guide books. In fact, in the film, the contemporary characters are reading from the very guidebook – written by a local man named Laurence Bussey who is president of the Smutynose Steards – that we hand out to visitors on the island.

The film opens with historic images of the real Louis Wagner, and an accurate map of the Isles of Shoals from one of Peter Randall’s books. The trial scene is well staged, but in reality, Maren did not testify in court. But, of course, as the protagonist concocts her fictional "Maren" theory, the fun goes out of the story for us historians. The imagined incest subplot that bubbles under the surface seems gratuitous to me and most people I’ve talked to. It distracts from the facts of the case, kills the drama, and adds a layer of 21^st century fiction that seems pretty silly if you know the character of the actual women in their time period.

Since the confession letter by Maren in the novel is fictional, the author then has to warp the facts to fit the fictional story and the realism quickly turns to sensationalism. By creating fictional motivations to make Maren, and not louis, the killer, the author loses the drama and horror inherent in the historical event itself. This is a bigger flaw in the film than in the novel since it is easier to imagine these events than to actually watch them in Technicolor. Something about the big screen makes it all the more improbable.

And this blending of fact and fiction bothers people?

It bothered me a lot when the novel first came out, but I’m over it. Fiction is powerful and, although Weight of Water is clearly a novel, readers have no way of knowing where the truth ends and the fiction begins. I still wince when people who don't know the history say "I think Maren did it." Of course, they don’t have the actual details. They are talking about a fictional Maren and confusing her with the real person. That seems unfair to her memory. But that is the nature of historical fiction. I once wrote a mystery novel of my own and fiddled with history and fact, and even though my novel never even found a publisher, I’ve become more forgiving about the role of the novelist. And if nothing else, the novel has brought more attention to the history itself. We were afraid, for awhile that the film would lead to a attack of souvenir hunters on the island (which actually happened in real life after the 1873 murders), but so few people saw the film that it has had almost no impact on island visitors.

My personal problem here is twofold. First, I don’t think the Maren theory works. The real story about Louis Wagner, to my mind, is so much more compelling than the silly "conspiracy" theories. I don’t think an alternate view is needed, and all the trumped up themes of jealousy and sexuality make less sense to me than the facts in the case – Louis, a thief, turned violent when caught. Secondly, I find it troubling that an actual living person -- a woman who most likely was victimized, traumatized and nearly killed -- is depicted as the murderer. Maybe it’s just karma, but I’d hate to read a novel in which my grandmother was treated that way. The story is so well crafted that people cannot tell where the history leaves off and the fiction begins.

So you believe Louis Wagner did it.

I do. In fact, seeing the story so well depicted on the big screen only confirmed my belief. Ciaran Hinds, the actor who played Wagner, did a great job of getting his smarmy personality across. Wagner had a way with ladies, but he was a slacker and a liar. "Weight of Water" of course, does not show Wagner rowing out to the island, or delivering a pitiful alibi in court, or running away to Boston by train the day after the murder -- having shaved, cleaned up and bought new clothes with the money he stole. Wagner was seen rowing into town the next morning by witnesses. He gave up without a word when arrested in a Boston hotel the next day. None of this really appears in the novel. It all makes much more sense than Maren hacking up her own sister and sister-in-law because of some bottled up sexual dysfunction. C’mon. get real.

But didn’t Wagner say he was innocent? And who could row that far?

Let’s not go there. Every murderer on death row says he’s innocent. OJ Simpson still says he’s innocent. Wagner was a sleazy guy, but he was a fisherman, the kind of guy who rows a dory for a living. Rowing to Smuttynose is not an impossible task. A local wooden boat builder told me a good rower can do it today in three hours. There’s an annual rowing race here every year.

The key to Wagner’s guilt, I think, is that he never expected to get caught. He was going to slip into the back cove at the island, steal the money, and take off without being seen. But things went badly, and he was spotted by women who knew him well. He reacted violently to silence them. One got away, and silenced him.

Wagner ended up finding only about $15 in the house, that prosecutors said was how he purchased new clothes and a train trip to Boston. Remember, it was Maren who identified Wagner. If Louis Wagner had been seen by even one person in Portsmouth on the night of the murder, Maren’s accusation would have been disproved. But despite his elaborate fictional defense, he had no alibi. He was not seen at any of the Portsmouth bars that he reportedly visited, especially odd also for a man who did not drink alcohol, but said he was lying drunk in public that night. He didn’t show up at his boarding house that night on Marcy Street (then Water Street). There is plenty of damning circumstantial evidence.

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Seacoast Review of Weight of Water

What about the alternative murder theories?

We’re getting way off the topic of the film here, but let’s deal with the "other" murder theories once and for all. The Smuttynose tragedy became a who-dunnit in the early 20th century. A writer named Edmund Pearson wrote about the murder for one of the popular pulp detective magazines. That article was later anthologized into a book called "Murder at Smuttynose and Other Stories." Since then it has been treated as an "open case" although the actual jury took less than an hour to reach its decision in 1873. Lyman Rutledge, a Shoals historian, picked up on the detective crime theme in his booklet about the murders, and Anita Shreve picked up on Ruttledge.

So back to the movie. What are the best scenes?

The opening scene, where Louis Wagner is carted through the streets of Portsmouth with an angry mob feels authentic and captures the mood of the times. When Maren confronts him in his jail cell, the scene resonates with reality. The reconstruction of the Hontvet house (The real one burned down 125 years ago) is a dead ringer for the one in the famous photos of the house. Director Kathryn Bigelow did an incredible job "growing" the house through time. When Maren and John arrive from Norway it is empty, bleak and foreboding. It becomes more homey, warm and colorful as the years pass and more members of the family arrive in America. Yet the rocky bleakness of Smuttynose Island remains effectively in the foreground – even though the film was shot in Nova Socita and not at the Isles of Shoals. There are no "best" scenes in the contemporary story, except when they walk through an imaginary Portsmouth. That was cool. The characters smoke a lot of cigarettes, smirk, drink a lot of wine, have banal conversations and cast melodramatic glances at one another to imply smoldering inner emotions that never rise to any believable level.

What did you like least?

Personally, I am sick to death of films that juxtapose sex and violence. Kathryn Bigelow is a very talented director, but she seems determined to prove that women can be as violent as men, and that women directors can show violence onscreen just like the big boys. Violence is our national disease and this film does nothing to explain or solve the problem. It offers nothing new and sheds no light on the past. The excuse that -- it’s all just "Art" and a mirror of our society -- is total crap, in my humble view. Directors and producers have a responsibility to stop, not to expand the madness. It's all, very simply, about making money shocking a population that is almost shock-proof and getting them into the theater. A film like "Picnic at Hanging Rock" is 100 times more emotionally powerful becuase the violence is implied, never seen. We are, as a nation, violence junkies, and other nations have the right to resent us for spreading our addition around the world. In "Weight" we never truly sympathize with the victims. When Evan discovers his slain wife at the opening of the film, there is an emotional charge. But the ultimate killing scene is more like "Dawn of the Dead", a cartoon of violence, not an emotional act. In fact, it's worse because the soundtrack here is filled with angelic singing, as if Maren is on some sort of mission from God. I found the scene sickening at first. We're driven to be more concerned with Maren's motivations than with the victims themselves, and so the humanity of the tale is lost. Why a good director would want to be Sam Peckinpaw or Quentin Tarrantino is beyond my understanding.

Any funny historical flaws in the film?

The film thinks Smuttynose Island is in New Hampshire, when it is in Maine. But that fact even confused the lawyers in 1873 until someone got out a map and noticed that the islands at the Shoals are divided between New Hampshire and Maine. There is a scene where a teakettle with no whistle whistles. There’s no snow in March in the film. The 20^th century characters swim in the open Atlantic Ocean, which can be pretty cold here even in summer. This ain’t the Bahamas. The other Isles of Shoals and the other houses on 19th century Smuttynose seem to be missing. The director does not want to confuse us with details, like the fact that a hotel was being built on Start Island at the same time as murder, or that Appledore is just across the cove from Smuttynose. But generally the prop and continuity people did a bang-up job. We spend a lot of time on the Shoals, and this film captures the feeling of the island.

Are you done with this movie?

Not by a long shot. I’ll get the DVD the minute it comes out to study the Smuttynose scenes even closer. I’d like to interview the people who built the sets and designed the costumes. If the reconstructed Hontvet house is still standing in Nova Scotia, I’d like very much to spend an hour inside it. That, for me, would be the greatest part of this whole crazy ride. The story is really all about Anita Shreve's fascination with the story of Maren, Karen and Anethe. It is a truly fascinating story and it compels many of us year after year. Thousands of visitors to the Shoals have felt it too. Now a million more people will want to know the real story too.