The Weight of Water (2000)

34% of critics liked it
(64 reviews)
39% of users liked it
(4,319 ratings)

A woman studying a crime of the past finds her own life becoming a morass of suspicion and deceit in this drama based on the novel by Anita Shreve. Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is a photographer working on a project that would document surviving evidence of a multiple murder that occurred a… More A woman studying a crime of the past finds her own life becoming a morass of suspicion and deceit in this drama based on the novel by Anita Shreve. Jean Janes (Catherine McCormack) is a photographer working on a project that would document surviving evidence of a multiple murder that occurred a hundred years ago -- when a man named Louis Wagner (Ciaran Hinds) brutally killed two immigrant women from Norway with an axe, only to discover a third, Maren Hontvedt (Sarah Polley), witnessed the mayhem and survived to identify him in court. Jean travels to the small New Hampshire coastal town where the killings occurred with her husband Thomas (Sean Penn), an award-winning poet; his brother Rich (Josh Lucas); and Rich's girlfriend Adaline (Elizabeth Hurley). As Jean digs deeper into the troubling facts of the long-ago murder, as well as the tangential details of Maren Honvedt's unhappy marriage to John Hontvedt (Ulrich Thomsen) and her incestuous affair with her brother Evan (Anders W. Berthelsen), Jean begins to believe that she has a crisis of her own to contend with: she is convinced Thomas is having an affair with Adaline. The Weight of Water also features Katrin Cartlidge as Maren's sister Karen and Vinessa Shaw as her sister-in-law Anethe. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: R, 1 hr. 53 min.
Directed By: Kathryn Bigelow
Written By: Alice Arlen, Christopher Kyle
Genres: Mystery & Suspense, Drama

In Theaters: Jul 6, 2001 Wide
On DVD: Mar 4, 2003
Studio: Lions Gate Releasing

Critic Reviews

Michael Sragow, New Yorker
The boating scenes have a languid yet charged sexuality, and the performances remain vibrant and rock-solid to the end.
Emanuel Levy, Variety
Artistically speaking, Bigelow's drama may be her most ambitous and personal film to date, a multi-layered (period and contemporary) psychological thriller that borrows from Bergman's masterpiece Persona; commercially, however, it's problematic.
Gary Dowell, Dallas Morning News
The jarring jumps between disconnected stories and watered-down sensationalism make for a soggy experience.
Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer
The Weight of Water uses water as a metaphor for subconscious desire, but this leaky script barely stays afloat.
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle
There are a few wrong notes, and the ending is too enigmatic for its own good, but for a studio production the film is uncommonly intelligent and uncompromising.
Janice Page, Boston Globe
Though it never rises to its full potential as a film, still offers a great deal of insight into the female condition and the timeless danger of emotions repressed.
Pablo Villaca, Cinema em Cena
Nem as ótimas performances de Sarah Polley e Sean Penn conseguem conferir energia a este filme, cujas histórias desenvolvidas paralelamente se anulam de forma implacável.
David Nusair, Reel Film Reviews
The film might appeal to those who've already read the book, but it's unlikely those who haven't will find much of anything to enjoy here.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
It doesn't surprise me that this film sat for two years in storage before released, as the final version appeared clunky.
Frank Ochieng, TheWorldJournal.com
Bigelow offers some flashy twists and turns that occasionally fortify this turgid fable. But for the most part, The Weight of Water comes off as a two-way time-switching myopic mystery that stalls in its lackluster gear of emotional blandness.
Christopher Null, Filmcritic.com
Despite an impressive roster of stars and direction from Kathryn Bigelow, The Weight of Water is oppressively heavy.
Phil Villarreal, Arizona Daily Star
The superior plotline isn't quite enough to drag along the dead (water) weight of the other.
Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion
Elegantly crafted but emotionally cold, a puzzle whose intricate construction one can admire but is difficult to connect with on any deeper level.
Gary Thompson, Philadelphia Daily News
[Two] fairly dull -- contrasting and interlocking stories about miserable Scandinavian settlers in 18th-century Canada, and yuppie sailboaters in the here and now.

Read all 14 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Red L

I enjoyed the plots. It took a while to become comfortable with the dual stories.
Gordon A

Sarah Polley saves a predictable fable from drowning in Sean Penn's ham.
Dean M

Very strange intriguing premise - solving a 100-year-old double murder - promises much but ultimately sinks under the weight of its own complexity. Even Sean penn and Elizabeth Hurley's flirtations fail to liven things up.
Jeffrey M

The Weight of Water follows two stories, one about a mysterious double murder in the 1870s, the other a modern day story line that seeks answers to the first. Both are interesting, but the older one much more so. The biggest problem the movie are the shifts between the two, which… More
The Weight of Water follows two stories, one about a mysterious double murder in the 1870s, the other a modern day story line that seeks answers to the first. Both are interesting, but the older one much more so. The biggest problem the movie are the shifts between the two, which undercut the effectiveness of both narratives, giving the film a disjointed feel. There's enough to like about both plot lines to keep it interesting, especially the acting, but unfortunately kept down from some ineffective direction.
Deb S

This movie switches between the lurid and sensational axe murder of two women in 1873 and the modern day story of a newspaper photographer, Jean (Catherine McCormack) who is researching the crime over 100 years later. Sarah Polley's performance as Maren Hontredt, a young and… More
This movie switches between the lurid and sensational axe murder of two women in 1873 and the modern day story of a newspaper photographer, Jean (Catherine McCormack) who is researching the crime over 100 years later. Sarah Polley's performance as Maren Hontredt, a young and hard-working Norwegian woman bought to this land far away from her family and married to a much older man is compelling and gripping. She struggles with a cold marriage, a desperate secret and a building internal rage that threatens her sanity. The past sequences were awesome, but I found the present day scene was predictable and lacked character development and continuity. Nevertheless Sean Penn is engaging to watch, and Liz Hurley is well cast as a flirty seductress. "Women's motives are always more concealed than men's," and this is revealed as we witness the powerful fury of violent emotions that sometimes overtake good people and move them to acts of horror.