The first trailer for writer/director Derek Cianfrance's adaptation of M.L. Stedman's novel The Light Between Oceans reveals Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander as Tom and Isabel Sherbourne, a lighthouse-keeping couple who are very much in love. Unfortunately, they're unable to bring a child into the world, so when a healthy baby turns up in a boat along their isolated section of the coast, Isabel believes their prayers have been answered at long last. Tom, a war veteran and man of principles, thinks differently and makes a decision that threatens to tear the couple apart.
This first trailer gives a fantastic look into the narrow scope of the world seen by the Sherbournes, a world that widens once they reach the Australian mainland and the many people who live there. It also seems like the perfect story for Cianfrance whose previous works Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines each focused on complicated romantic relationships across dynamic changes in time to dramatic effect. And it doesn't hurt that Fassbender and Vikander's real-life relationship brings some charismatic authenticity to the screen. Also starring Rachel Weisz, The Light Between Oceans will open September 2nd on American shores.
Watch the first trailer for The Light Between Oceans below (via The Guardian):
Here's the book's synopsis (via Amazon):
After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
Tom, who keeps meticulous records and whose moral principles have withstood a horrific war, wants to report the man and infant immediately. But Isabel insists the baby is a “gift from God,” and against Tom’s judgment, they claim her as their own and name her Lucy. When she is two, Tom and Isabel return to the mainland and are reminded that there are other people in the world. Their choice has devastated one of them.
