From the award-winning writer-director of Personal Velocity comes a startling drama about the nature of family and the meaning of ideals
In his first role since Gangs of New York, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Jack Slavin, an engineer who over thirty years ago walked away from the mainstream to live out a more deliberate life. But the island commune he began in hopes of a better future has long since imploded and he is now its final resident. Jack’s only other companion is his 16-year-old daughter Rose (Camilla Belle), whom he has deliberately sheltered from the outside world. Now, beset by terminal illness, encroaching developers, and Rose’s emerging womanhood, Jack faces troubling questions about the days ahead. In an attempt to provide his daughter with the kind of family she’s never known, Jack invites Kathleen (Catherine Keener), the woman he’s been secretly seeing on the mainland, and her sons to live with them. But rather than comforted, Rose feels betrayed and lashes out with a willful and deliberate retribution that places her innocence on the battlefield and Kathleen’s safety in danger. His carefully constructed worldflung out of control, Jack finds himself trapped between two headstrong women and forced to take action. With The Ballad of Jack and Rose, award-winning filmmaker Rebecca Miller has
created a powerful and poetic third feature about a man who has cut himself off from a society that refuses to live up to his standards, and a young girl’s sudden coming-of-age.