In America Review
by Karina Montgomery (karina AT cinerina DOT com)December 18th, 2003
In America
Matinee with Snacks
This could be the most personal movie ever made. That sounds like a bold statement, but consider that director Jim Sheridan wrote it, directed it, produced it, but first lived it. It's a tale both sad, terribly sad, and also terribly uplifting. A family of four Irish immigrants come to New York City circa 1981 after the death of one of the children in order for the husband, Johnny (Paddy Considine) to make his way as an actor. The girls (Sarah and Emma Bolger) are precocious and lovely, the wife (Samantha Norton) is loving and supportive, but something is amiss. The ghost of that lost child will not let them rest in their new home. No, it's not really a ghost story. Their lost child's presence is more tragic and insidious in how it affects the remaining family than just a wavering blob of ectoplasm could ever be.
The Bolger sisters, playing sisters, are simply fantastic. Sarah (playing the older sister, Christy) does a good bit of the narration of the film, and the scenes are either straight narrative, or integrated with her camcorder diary. Their neighbor, Mateo (Djimoun Hounsou) finds himself caught first in the web of Emma Bolger's sweetness (playing Ariel) and then in the bubbling life of the family below the surface of their struggle and turmoil. To watch his vital, musclebound presence soften in the presence of these children, and through the course of his portion of the story, is impressive. Samantha Morton (Minority Report) retains her fragility from that Spielberg role but shores it up with a strength I imagine only a mother who has outlived a child can generate. She is subtle and graceful in her performance, and she complements Considine well.
To imagine Jim Sheridan reliving his story through these actors, both from his perspective and the actors' sensitivity to him, must have been incredibly intense, and somehow this energy is transmitted on the screen. The joyous moments feel like pure white light, and the moments when you want to cry feel as if to tear up in a movie theatre would be inappropriate, like, it's too intimate and you can't admit you actually witnessed these events. Even a publicly set scene, in a carnival, you can't bear to watch. You can feel exactly what everyone is feeling in that moment, and every cell in your body screams "nooo!" One cannot help but get emotionally involved with this movie.
Some moments are more surreal than others, and some are simply droplets of sweet childlike innocence glistening in their extremely seedy New York City tenement. Wound around our little family are the lies we tell to keep our spirits up or to protect each other, or that we tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world. The faith in each other, the faith in other people, and the wishes that we make all have serious repercussions in the world of Sheridan's little family, scrounging their way through the process of finding peace with the death of their son, and more. It's lovely, but bring a tissue.
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These reviews (c) 2003 Karina Montgomery. Please feel free to forward but credit the reviewer in the text. Thanks. You can check out previous reviews at:
http://www.cinerina.com and http://ofcs.rottentomatoes.com - the Online Film Critics Society http://www.hsbr.net/reviews/karina/listing.hsbr - Hollywood Stock Exchange Brokerage Resource
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
