Every person has their own dream places where they hope to settle after retirement. For some, this place could be a beautiful log house with huge windows where one can look at stars at night; for others, it could be a penthouse that has a magnificent skyline view. Lasse Hallstrom’s new movie, Safe Haven, takes place in another type of dream place. A clear view of a blue sea is welcoming, seagulls are wheeling around the port, and the gentle ring of a bell is heard from afar. The first encounter of this kind of beautiful village will be blissful.

 Such a blissful moment also comes to Katie (Julianne Hough). Chased by the threats of her past, Katie hurries to escape from her old house and seeks a new place to settle down. She takes a bus that stops at a seaside town for a while. The scenery of the town, Southport, captivates her. At once, she decides to buy a house; and being the new resident, she starts new relationships. She finds herself being attracted to Alex (Josh Duhamel), a widower with two

children, but hesitates to get serious with him. Yet Katie gradually lowers her barrier with the help of her neighbor, Jo (Cobie Smulders).

▲ A picture of Southport, North Carolina, the U.S. Provided by bloggerlens.com

What Makes Us Feel Safe

Katie is an unstable person. In the very first scene of the movie, she runs away from some mystery with her hair all scruffy and windblown. Then, she even cuts and dyes her hair to break away from the chase of the past. She is on guard, so she does not welcome the approach of new people. The anxiety haunts and torments her throughout the movie; yet, as she settles in Southport, her unease seems to disappear. It seems that Southport is Katie’s own “safe haven.”

From this part, then, one may conclude that a physically safe place gives people a sense of safety. The film, however, says something different. Though she ends up in a peaceful place, she worries that her life can be threatened at any time. These worries start to disappear only when she begins to interact with other people and build relationships. The emphasis on relationship becomes clearer in the scene where Katie decides to leave the town due to the crisis that happened in her relationship.

▲ Katie gets closer to Alex through sequence of events. Provided by cgv.co.kr

Motion Pictures? Scenery Pictures

Though our eyes do not conceive video as a series of pictures, the video is a successive connection of still images that are consecutively captured with very short intervals. By connecting those pictures, films embody people’s motions and, therefore, are called motion pictures. So, film and photography are similar in the sense that they both capture images falling onto people’s retina and record on the surfaces of film. Yet people do not say film equals photography. Film and photography are considered as two completely different fields and have so many different criteria when people judge whether a work is good or bad.

Mainly, this difference exists because film records the motions of things around us and creates the “story” through such motions. True, photography may also deliver the story, but this story is not as powerful as that of a film. Safe Haven, however, fails to depict this key factor of film and makes almost no impression with its story. Indeed, the producers tried to create a multi-dimension story with a few twists. Nevertheless, these attempts only ended up more tragically due to the obviousness and the ridiculousness of the twists. One may argue with this view, saying that a story cannot be the ultimate criterion for judging the fineness of a movie. One may also say that all the magnificent scenery of this movie that the director greatly captured in the frame should be considered. This film did succeed in capturing the beautiful scenery of the seaside town, but it was not enough to be called mise–en–scène. As a visual art that delivers the theme, mise–en–scène can only be meaningful when there is a story that deepens each scene of the movie. The story of this movie, however, made the efforts to create visually artful imagery fruitless; thereby just giving the impression of a set of fine scenery pictures of a town, not a great movie.

Safe Haven guarantees one thing: this movie may suggest another dream place by successfully capturing a splendid view of Southport, but remember, that is it! You may be disappointed if you hope to find another warm and touching story from this movie. This movie leaves a thousand pities. It failed to create a strong story especially considering that thewriter of this story is the same as the one who wrote one of the most powerful romantic movies, Notebook. It also failed to make its theme bound the episodes to one strong plot.

Film Information

Release Date: November 6, 2013. (Korea)

Running time: 115 min.

Director: Lasse Hallström

Cast: Julianne Hough, Josh Duhamel, Cobie Smulders