The Shipping News (film)
| The Shipping News | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Lasse Hallström |
| Produced by | Rob Cowan Leslie Holleran Irwin J. Winkler |
| Screenplay by | Robert Nelson Jacobs |
| Based on |
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx |
| Starring |
Kevin Spacey Julianne Moore Judi Dench Cate Blanchett |
| Music by | Christopher Young |
| Cinematography | Oliver Stapleton |
| Edited by | Andrew Mondshein |
| Distributed by | Miramax Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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111 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $38 million |
| Box office | $24,690,441 |
The Shipping News is a 2001 drama film directed by Lasse Hallström, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.
It stars Kevin Spacey as the protagonist Quoyle, Judi Dench as Agnis Hamm, and Julianne Moore as Wavey Prowse. It also stars Cate Blanchett, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn, Rhys Ifans, Jason Behr, and Gordon Pinsent.
The film opens with Quoyle's father tossing him into water, expecting him to naturally swim. The image of Quoyle struggling to swim is reprised several times in later crises.
Flash forward to an adult Quoyle (Kevin Spacey), who lives a lonely life and works as an inksetter in a small newspaper company in Poughkeepsie, New York. Deciding to make a life for himself, he meets and marries a local outgoing woman named Petal (Cate Blanchett). Six years later, the emotionally distant and promiscuous cheating Petal runs off with a lover, only to die soon after in a car accident, leaving him with their 6-year-old daughter Bunny (whom Petal had sold off for $6,000 to an illegal adoption agency). Quoyle's Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench) happens to be visiting when the news arrives that Quoyle's estranged father and mother committed suicide together in a pact. Agnis is moving to the ancestral family home in Newfoundland which has been abandoned for 44 years. Realizing that Quoyle is at a total loss through grief she first offers to stay a few more days and help him through the crisis and then persuades him to move with her to the Quoyle family house in Newfoundland.
While struggling to rebuild his life, fix up the derelict house and care for his daughter, Quoyle meets local resident Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore), a widow with a pre-teen boy. Wavey's son and Quoyle's daughter become friends while the two adults become friends and then more. Wavey has dark secrets in her past; but so does the Quoyle family. Quoyle takes a job at the local newspaper company Gammy Bird as a car-crash writer and accident/crime scene photographer to support himself and his daughter.
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