Irish Film Institute -THE SEA

THE SEA

Director: Stephen Brown

86 minutes, Ireland-U.K., 2013, Colour, D-Cinema


Closing this Thursday, May 1st. Tickets are on sale now.

Art historian Max Morden seeks solace in a quiet seaside resort where he spent summers as a child. Taking up residence in a once familiar boarding house, prone to increasingly heavy drinking and avoiding working on a book he claims to be writing, Max revisits incidents from his past, specifically, the recent death of his wife from cancer and the summer of 1955, when he ingratiated himself with the Grace family, a middle-class, bohemian clan who welcomed him into their world. Max struggles to find peace while dealing with these traumatic reflections.

A meditation on memory, grief and love, Stephen Brown’s directorial debut is a classy adaptation of John Banville’s Booker Prize-winning novel, for which Banville himself provides the script. Ciarán Hinds is reliably excellent at the centre of the film, and he’s supported by a distinguished cast which includes Natascha McElhone, Charlotte Rampling, Rufus Sewell and Sinéad Cusack. (Notes by Michael Hayden.)

Don’t forget we now schedule weekly.

IFI Spotlight, our annual review of Irish film and television, will take place on Saturday, April 12th and will feature a day of free seminars and panel discussions.

Book Tickets

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