| Director | Derek Cianfrance |
|---|---|
| Genre | drama film, romance film, war film |
| Runtime | 133 min |
| Country | Australia, United Kingdom, United States |
| Budget | $20 million |
| Box office | $26 million |
In December 1918, Tom Sherbourne – a traumatised and withdrawn hero of World War I – is hired as a lightkeeper at Janus Rock, a lighthouse off the coast of Australia. He falls in love with a local girl, Isabel Graysmark, and they marry. Isabel suffers two miscarriages in two years and fears she may never become a mother.
Shortly after Isabel's second miscarriage, a rowboat containing a dead man and a newborn baby girl washes ashore near the lighthouse. Tom knows that he is required by law to report the discovery. However, Isabel fears that the baby will almost certainly be sent to an orphanage and persuades Tom to pass the baby off as their own daughter, to which he reluctantly agrees. He buries the man on the island, and the couple names the infant girl Lucy.
As Tom and Isabel are about to have Lucy christened on the mainland, Tom sees a woman, Hannah Roennfeldt, kneeling in front of a grave bearing the names of Franz Johannes Roennfeldt and his baby daughter Grace Ellen, who were lost at sea on the day they found Lucy, 27 April 1926. Tom fears that Lucy may very well be Hannah's missing infant daughter. He writes anonymously to Hannah to tell her that her husband is dead but that her infant daughter is safe, loved and well cared for.
Four years later, Tom, Isabel and young Lucy, enjoying an idyllic life together, attend a ceremony for the anniversary of Tom's lighthouse. They strike up a conversation with Hannah and her sister, Gwendolyn Potts, and learn that Franz was a German, that Hannah's marrying him so soon after the First World War was controversial, and that he had been accosted in the street by a drunken crowd. Franz jumped into a rowboat and fled with his baby daughter.
Tormented by his conscience, Tom sends Hannah a small silver rattle that was found with Lucy on the boat. One of Tom's co-workers recognizes the rattle on a reward poster and reports him to the police. Accused of murdering Franz, Tom takes full responsibility, claiming he bullied Isabel into complying. Isabel is enraged that Tom is willing to give Lucy away and breaks off contact with him after his arrest. The police are unable to obtain an answer from the distraught Isabel as to whether or not Franz was dead when they discovered him.
Lucy is returned to her biological family but initially rejects and hates them, due to having no memory of them whatsoever. She refuses to answer to her given name. Lucy runs away in an effort to return to the Lighthouse and her "real parents", and a search team is sent to rescue her. She is found and returned to Hannah, but the events lead Hannah to realize that Lucy really belongs to Isabel.
Hannah promises to return Lucy to Isabel as soon as Isabel testifies against Tom. Just as Tom is about to be taken by boat to Albany for trial, Isabel reads a letter which Tom had sent her, saying he had not deserved his happiness with Lucy and how carrying the blame will assuage his guilt for surviving the war.
Isabel jumps on the boat and confesses everything. Moved by their gesture and reminded by Franz's words to always forgive others, Hannah offers to speak on their behalf at trial. Lucy has at last begun to bond with her biological mother and maternal grandfather, who agrees to call her "Lucy Grace" as a compromise.
In 1950, 27-year-old Lucy Grace Rutherford, accompanied by her baby son Christopher, tracks Tom down. She has not been in contact with the Sherbournes for over eighteen years, as they had agreed not to contact her for the rest of her girlhood. Isabel has recently died, still tormented with guilt for her actions, and Tom gives Lucy Grace a letter that her adoptive mother had written in case Lucy ever made contact. An emotionally sorrowful Lucy Grace thanks Tom, the only father she ever knew, for rescuing and raising her for the four years of her life on Janus Rock, and she asks if she can visit again. She and Tom embrace before she leaves. Tom sits on his rocking chair, now content with what life had given him.