The cinematography is frequently gorgeous, and the romantic Andre Desplat music lovely but manipulative. Vikander is equally convincing as a youthful bride with grit and joy who convinces her husband, sworn to save lives in the lighthouse, to endanger himself and her by his foolish act. His every facial muscle works to show immense joy at his marriage and deep sorrow at his crime.

Fassbender is the Oscar contender he was meant to be. With the presence of a child who belongs to someone else, he is tortured by thoughts of taking a loved one away as the war did for so many families. The end of WWI brings survivors like Tom an overpowering guilt that he survived while so many others didn't. Just as what he has done preys on Tom's conscience, the needs of his wife to have a child overcome this otherwise beacon of upright manhood and good sense. Along the way, the accomplished acting throws a powerful cast over the proceedings so that as outrageously melodramatic as it may seem, the film relentlessly shows at each turn how conscience does indeed make cowards of us all. Most of us would question whether we would keep the child, given that we may never have one ourselves, just as this couple does. Where this does not become a maudlin, sentimental romance is in a few realistic details. Notwithstanding the absurd good fortune that they find a baby after her two miscarriages, the story becomes increasingly complex with intersecting themes of passionate love and doing the right thing. The tension comes not from storms at sea but the ramifications of their keeping the child a secret. A newly-married couple, Tom and Isabel (Alicia Vikander), living on a remote lighthouse island off the west coast of Australia in the second decade of the twentieth century, find a baby washed ashore in a rowboat. We can't keep her.' Tom (Michael Fassbender) I was ready to witness a Nicholas Sparks imitator with The Light Between Oceans rather I enjoyed a whiff of Thomas Hardy.

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