‘The Lovely Bones’ is partially based on a true story

Editor’s Note: The following refers to sexual assault and murder.

The Big Picture

• The Lovely Bones
  is a ghost story that combines supernatural, horror, and drama genres and is based on a real-life murder in Pennsylvania.
• Alice Sebold, the author, wrote the story from the perspective of a murdered girl seeking justice, inspired by her experience of sexual assault.
• The film adaptation of
  The Lovely Bones
  captures the emotional depth of the story and serves as a chilling reminder of women’s potential vulnerability to such heinous crimes.

The Lovely Bones is an unsettling story that spans multiple movie genres, including supernatural, horror, and drama. Since most of the film is from the perspective of a young girl stuck in purgatory, it’s hard to believe that it will be rooted in any real-life events, but it is! The Lovely Bones Follows the story of a young girl, Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), who has been murdered. Susie is lured to the home of her neighbor George (Stanley Tucci), where he sexually assaults and kills her.. Susie doesn’t realize at first that she’s dead, but eventually, she realizes that she’s now stuck between realms where she can keep an eye on her family and community.

As she watches, all she wants is justice for his death, healing for her family, and a kiss from her crush. However, being in between worlds has its advantages when trying to catch a killer. Susie meets other girls that George has killed in the past, and this helps her figure out who might be his next target. While all this is happening, members of Susie’s family — including her father, Jack (Mark Wahlberg), mother, Abigail (Rachel Weisz), and sister, Lindsay (Rose McIver) — try to find evidence to capture George as he tries to cope with the unfathomable loss of his daily life. at the end of The Lovely BonesMay Susie and her family rest in peaceBut it takes a lot of anger and sadness to get there.

‘The Lovely Bones’ is partly about a murder in Pennsylvania

The Lovely Bones It was based on the book of the same name by the author Alice SeboldAnd that The book is somewhat loosely based on an actual murder that took place in Pennsylvania in the 1970s. The incident took place in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where a 14-year-old girl was kidnapped from her parents and brutally raped and murdered. After hearing about this, Alice Sebold supposedly wanted to write the book from the point of view of someone who had died, so she wrote it from Susie’s point of view. The murder of a young girl inspired him, but that’s where the book and the final film travel more into the realm of fantasy than real life. Sebold seemed to imagine looking down on your family, suffering from grievances and needing justice for your own murder. Susie’s character portrays the pain of not being able to protect herself from harm and the guilt of leaving your loved ones behind as she spends her time in the supernatural realm. However, that’s where the story stops being about the Norristown teen and becomes more about Sebold.

‘The Lovely Bones’ was inspired by Alice Sebold’s own attack

Before writing The Lovely BonesAlice Sebold wrote her memoirs, Lucky. The story explores her time in college and her experience with rape. While attending college at Syracuse University in 1981, Sebold had an unthinkable experience one evening as she drifted back to sleep. An unknown assailant attacked him in a pedestrian tunnel, and While Sebold survived the attack, his assailant fled. After the attack, Sebold returned to her family home in Philadelphia. Her parents urged her to drop out of university and attend a local Catholic college, but Sebold had already been accepted into a program at Syracuse that would allow her to work with two great writers, Tess Gallagher, And Tobias Wolff

.

Once she returned to school, she began to write more and more. Sebold said The New Yorker That she always knew she would write about her experience. The moment that really pushed her toward writing her own story was during Gallagher’s class when she was writing a poem that alluded to her attack. Shortly after writing that poem, Sebold was walking into a workshop with Wolff and saw his attacker, or so he thought. Sebold named the man she saw as her rapist, and Anthony Broadwater was arrested on the charge.. It seems that by writing that poem in class she allowed her abuser to reveal herself. Although he was not, in fact, Sebold, the man who attacked Broadwater was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In 1995, Alice Sebold was living in Irvine, California and in the creative writing program at the University of California, Irvine. Here she began writing the story of Susie Salmon and The Lovely Bones. After just writing the introduction The Lovely Bones, Sebold said she knew she needed to flesh out her own story to separate the two. The result was quite the opposite of the experiences. Lucky, her memoir, was sharp and detailed. It was dark and matter-of-fact and incredibly chilling but in a different way than Susie’s story. Susie was attacked in the same manner as Sebold, but the way she tells her story is different. In an interview with NPR, Sebold said she wanted to tell the story the way Susie would have told it, without her own experiences and thoughts about the attacks interjecting. Lucky was published in 1999 and The Lovely Bones A little later, in 2002 came.

Like ‘The Lovely Bones’ Susie Salmon, Alice Sebold never got justice

In November 2021, Broadwater was acquitted of the crime against Sebold, sending shock waves through the literary community. He spent more than 16 years in prison, tried to plead guilty five times and was denied parole at least five times for refusing to admit to a crime he did not commit. According to The New Yorker, after learning of Broadwater’s release, Sebold had a hard time. She described it as “pulling the thread out of the sweater and it falling away”. In this situation, both parties suffered losses. Broadwater had to wait to see the light at the end of the tunnel for his false convictions, and Sebold is responsible for his misrepresentation

And because his real assailant was never caught, he received no justice.

The Lovely Bones Every woman’s worst nightmare. Such attacks can happen to anyone, and the disturbing story is enough to send shivers down your bones. Tea The emotional depth that the film can convey is palpableAnd it just makes sense Peter JacksonA film based on Alice Sebold’s traumatic experience can do just that. If you are looking for a supernatural secret, The Lovely Bones Takes you to another realm while watching.

The Lovely Bones Available to stream on Max in the US

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