‘Anemone’ Review: Daniel Day-Lewis Comes Out of Retirement for a Stark Family Reckoning

The camera slowly moves in on Daniel Day-Lewis’s face — very slowly, almost imperceptibly. The man is silent, his gaze intense, piercing. The camera comes closer. Then he mutters something along the lines of “fuck off” and walks away. Anemone is full of moments like this, poised somewhere between reverence and sheer fascination with one of the great actors of our time. It is obvious that Ronan Day-Lewis, the film’s director and the actor’s son, deeply admires his father and makes no effort to hide it. Every shot that follows him underlines that devotion: the long monologues punctuated by theatrical pauses, the physical confrontations, the quiet, wordless routines of daily life in the cabin where his character has lived alone for years — and, above all, that look. Every time Day-Lewis glances just past the edge of the camera, something like a tremor runs through the film.

Anemone is a family drama in more ways than one. It explores a troubled relationship between father and son, and it is directed by a son who co-wrote the screenplay with his own father. It is also, unmistakably, a tribute and a celebration. After announcing his retirement from acting in 2017, following the sublime Phantom Thread, Day-Lewis agreed to return to the screen for his son’s debut feature. The film is fully aware of that context and openly embraces it. Its central premise — seeking out a solitary man living almost in hiding deep in the woods and coaxing him back into the world — lends itself easily to an autobiographical reading.

The story Anemone actually tells, however, is a rather different one, and Ronan Day-Lewis unfolds it gradually. The film begins almost like an experimental work, filled with unsettling, opaque images and an ominous score that signals dark complications ahead. Coming from a background in the visual arts, the director has a keen eye for composition, though at times he seems overly drawn to affectation: an indulgence in symbolism and the addition of an unnecessary dreamlike strand that runs parallel to the main narrative.

The plot proper opens with Jem (Sean Bean, serving as a more physical than verbal counterpart to Day-Lewis) praying, saying goodbye to his family, and riding his motorcycle along the roads of northern Britain towards an uncertain destination. Left behind are his wife, Nessa (Samantha Morton), and their son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), both wearing the unmistakable expression of people who seem miserable ninety-nine per cent of the time. Cut to a man mostly seen in darkness, often from behind, carrying out the daily maintenance of a cabin deep in the forest. This man, Ray (Day-Lewis), hears someone approaching and reaches for an axe. When he realises it is his brother Jem, he lowers it — but not to embrace him. The reunion is, for quite some time, silent, curt and abrasive. They have not seen each other in years, that much is clear, and verbal communication does not appear to be their strong suit.

Until, with the familiar assistance of alcohol, the knots begin to loosen. Or rather: Ray speaks, and Jem listens. Anemone moves through that reunion, through the reasons that led Ray to withdraw from the world, and through what Jem and Nessa ultimately want from him. Early on we learn that Brian has behavioural problems, that he has been suspended from the army, and that although Jem raised him as his own, Ray is in fact his biological father. Along the way, the film invokes its larger themes — signposted in the opening credits — the church, corrupt priests, the conflict in Northern Ireland, and the family traumas embedded in those histories.

All of this serves as a somewhat unstable dramatic platform upon which the star of There Will Be Blood steadily reclaims the screen, with the admiring consent of his director-son. He begins with moments of pure non-verbal force and physical energy — running, swimming, chopping wood, fighting, staring with reckless intensity — before moving towards a series of extended, stage-minded monologues that deliver a stark reminder of his extraordinary talent, and of everything cinema has been missing in his absence.

There is no question that Daniel Day-Lewis is a formidable actor. A twelve-minute monologue midway through the film, in which he recounts fragments of his painful personal history to his brother, is not only impeccably performed but also re-engages the viewer emotionally with a film that until then has felt rather cold and remote. That said, the scene is also undeniably a bit too much — like a rock band pausing the concert so the star guitarist can launch into an extended solo. The talent is beyond dispute; the way it is showcased is more open to debate.

Dramatically speaking, Anemone is fairly traditional: the story of a fractured family, torn apart by painful circumstances and attempting, decades later, to mend broken bonds. What the Day-Lewises attempt here is to tell that story in a deeply personal way. At times it works, moving the viewer with its formal elegance and unusual structure. At others, it overwhelms, weighed down by a near-biblical grandiosity, as if the director believed he were telling the definitive story of all father-son relationships at once. That excess of solemnity ultimately undermines the film’s sense of truth and credibility. Daniel Day-Lewis may be a god of acting, and his commanding presence often flirts with the solemn, but when the film itself builds on that same register, the result can feel excessive. Intense and, at moments, genuinely gripping. But also, undeniably, exhausting.