How to Make a Modern Period Piece for $5 Million: Behind the Scenes of ‘BlackBerry’Īlthough the story sounds right up Cianfrance’s alley, the filmmaker recently told IndieWire that he was attracted to it because it did the one thing he so desperately wanted: It got him out of his own head. But their happiness is short-lived, as Fassbender’s Tom and Vikander’s Isabel suffer a series of miscarriages that wear their nerves (and hearts) ever thinner.

That plan is thrown into initially wonderful turmoil when he falls for the daughter of a local family, played by newly minted Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander, and the two set about making a life for themselves on their beautiful and isolated island. Cianfrance adapted the novel himself, which follows a WWI vet (played by Michael Fassbender) as he attempts to find some much-deserved peace and quiet when he takes a job tending a lone lighthouse on a secluded island off the coast of Australia. Stedman’s best-selling novel “ The Light Between Oceans,” a tearjerker that rarely lets up on an emotionally wrenching story. The “Blue Valentine” and “The Place Beyond the Pines” helmer is best known for making gut-punch features that turn electric love stories into elegies (and sometimes even eulogies) on the meaning of commitment and family, so it’s no surprise that his latest feature - distributed by Walt Disney and their DreamWorks, and thus his first real studio film - explores those same themes, albeit on a much bigger scale.įor his first film since 2012’s “Pines,” Cianfrance has taken on M.L. Derek Cianfrance knows a thing or two about heartbreak.

The light between oceans stedman