Turn, Turn, Turn
by Christian De Matteo

HUGE

Jim Sheridan's In America hurt me and I thank it for the hurt.  As I write this, the date is January 25th, 2006, nearly three years since the movie came out, and I should have seen it a long time ago.  I've been interested for some time, but never enough to actually rent it, and, like so many other great movies I end up seeing, it turns out I was missing out on something astounding.

Alternately a beautiful story of family and a ten ton barrell to the chest, In America, written by director Jim Sheridan and his two daughter and dedicated to his young brother Frankie who passed away at 10 years old, is not your turn of the century tale of immigration, but rather a period piece about the 1980's in New York, and the immigrants trying to make it then.

And it is indeed 1980s New York, for those of us who remember it, with its crime, homelessness, darkness and perversity... and yet the movie does not damn it.  Instead it celebrates all the struggle and strife of those trying to make it right by making their own lives work, by fighting for what they need and fighting for who they are.  It is a story of poverty and of the difficulities of being the man, the father, the hero, when heroic deeds seem so distant, difficult and impossible to achieve.

Everything about this movie blew me away.  The pacing is perfect, the way the story reveals itself, dances around clichés to prove that clichés are only badly drawn versions of the truth, the moments that matter and the silence, the quiet that accompanies such moments.  The ultimate statement of this is the tender, loving rendition of The Star Spangled Banner as sung by children, a song of loudness and explosion but performed with the tenderness embodied in the Statue of Liberty as performed by the youngest member of the cast, the beautiful Emma Bolger.  Both daughters in the film, played by two sisters, Emma and Sarah, fill the heart of the movie with such love and innocence, but more than that.  Theirs is not the innocence of ignorance we so often pride in children.  Theirs is the innocence of knowledge of the bad still mingled with hope and optomism.  These are not the little girls of rich suburbanites, lost in worlds of toys and play dates, but rather the little girls that are so many of our mothers and grandmothers.  The girls who at very young ages had to be the silent pillars, bearing much of the family's pain, forcing their childhood to be a true childhood more for the sake of their parents who wanted so much for them to be happy, then even for themselves.

And Samantha Morton.  You HUGEReviewers out there who've been reading my ramblings for years know of my love for this amazing actress who stole my heart forever in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown.  My introduction to her was there, as a mute/deaf woman, and there her acting was the very soul of the movie.  In Minority Report again amazed me, and again, with almost no words.  Now I see her in this and finally she has a role of a woman who can speak which she does admirably.  But it is her silences, her very body as the mouth through which she emotes that again blows me away.  She was nominated for an Oscar for this performance and probably deserved to win.  She is not her frail, frightened Minority Report character here, she is a pillar, she is the parent who knows how to keep the children as children and not let them suffer too much too early for all that is life.  Between her and the two young actresses playing her daughters, even at all their weakest moments, a strength runs through the film.

Bringing us to Dad, played by Paddy Considine, and actor I've never seen before but was very impressed with.  Between him and the excellent Djimon Hounsou, the men are represented, strong as well, but hurting inside for what it is that makes them feel like they are missing the mark on who their supposed to be.  Considine's John is a good father, a loving father, but the death of his five year old son has scarred him and rendered him (or has he rendered himself) unable to provide the truth of love for his daughters and wife he so desperately wants to.  Now, living in a building full of junkies and other immigrants struggling too, he's finding it hard to reclaim his place as the breadwinner and the hero.  A moment in the middle of the film, almost out of nowhere, centers the film for the incredibly difficult and powerful third act and gives us the courage we, the audience need, to survive what is one of the most difficult scenarios imaginable for a family.

In America is an incredible film, a powerful, a painful film and one of the most beautiful, patriotic love letters to America, to New York and to the people, all of us, who make it up.

Well done, Jim Sheridan.  Now, just one question:  Are you making another great, deep, powerful project that desperately needed funding that explains your directing of Get Rich or Die Tryin'?  Or is this just an ironic commentary on Curtis Hanson's trek from Wonder Boys to 8 Mile?  Any plans to resurrect "Greg the Bunny" next?