This Is My Father Review
by Scott Renshaw (renshaw AT inconnect DOT com)July 13th, 1999
THIS IS MY FATHER
(Sony Classics)
Starring: Aidan Quinn, James Caan, Moya Farrelly, Jacob Tierney, Moira Deady, Colm Meaney.
Screenplay: Paul Quinn.
Producers: Nicholas Clermont and Philip King.
Director: Paul Quinn.
MPAA Rating: R (adult themes, profanity, sexual situations) Running Time: 122 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
THIS IS MY FATHER is a family affair, and not just because its subject matter involves family ties. The writer/director is Paul Quinn, brother of star Aidan Quinn, both of whom are also brothers to cinematographer Declan Quinn, with all three acting as executive producers. It must have seemed a warm and wonderful thing for the brothers Quinn to collaborate on a tale of their homeland, a paean to the importance of finding one's roots combined with the rich atmosphere of 1930s Ireland. So warm and wonderful was the experience, evidently, that no one bothered to pay much attention to telling an interesting, coherent story.
THIS IS MY FATHER is a sprawling mess of a film that tries to tell several stories, each one more irritating than the last. The narrative opens in the present day, where Chicago high school teacher Kieran Johnson (James Caan) is experiencing some sort of existential crisis. When he finds a photo and note from a man named Kieran among his invalid mother's possessions, he connects that malaise to never knowing his father. With his vaguely sullen nephew Jack (Jacob Tierney) in tow, Kieran travels to his mother's Irish hometown, where an elderly resident (Moira Deady) spins him a tale circa 1939. In that tale, Kieran's mother Fiona Flynn (Moya Farrelly) is a high-spirited 17-year-old who catches the eye of shy farmer Kieran O'Day (Aidan Quinn). The pairing causes trouble in the town, of course, as religion and family objections come between Fiona and Kieran the elder.
The trouble begins in THIS IS MY FATHER with a present-day prologue that does a miserable job of setting up the premise. In fact, the entire framing story feels like little more than a series of ridiculous contrivances. Caan's monotonously shellshocked performance offers little indication as to what his problem is, how long it's been going on, or how it's connected to his equally shellshocked sister and ill mother. The addition of fatherless young Jack to the travelling party seems intended to provide a contemporary parallel as his own youthful romance blossoms. Unfortunately, that romance is so ridiculously apocryphal that it's not clear until the last ten minutes which of two girls is supposed to be his own lovely lass. Every moment set in the present is a wearying bore, leading this viewer to a stone-faced demand that the flashback sequences better be worth it.
They're not. They're an improvement, to be certain, but there's so much extraneous business going on that the central romance gets lost. Strewn throughout the tale are a couple of curses, the omnipresent institutional frown of the Catholic Church (including a nicely creepy role for Stephen Rea as a fire-and-brimstone priest), a bit of class warfare, and a cameo appearance by John Cusack as an American photographer who lands his plane to play American football with Kieran and Fiona on a beach, take the picture which will end up in Kieran the younger's hands, and go away. The romance itself ultimately makes no sense from Fiona's side, with nary an attempt to explain why the spunky girl would be charmed by the socially inept Kieran. Aidan Quinn fares better as a man-child unsure how to handle a romantic relationship, but the story places too much tragic weight on his shoulders. THIS IS MY FATHER wanders all over the Emerald Isle in search of a compelling theme or relationship, and never finds one.
I suppose the Quinns may have been pointing out the generational consequences of fatherlessness through Kieran O'Day (orphaned), Fiona (child of a widow), Kieran Johnson and Jack (both with absentee fathers). They may have been most interested in re-creating the sights and sounds of 1939 Ireland. They may have wanted to make their own TITANIC-lite romantic weeper, complete with Celtic music. The problem is that you really can't tell what they wanted to do with any degree of certainty. THIS IS MY FATHER never pulls its two storylines together in any believable way, nor manages to make either one gripping on its own terms. The filming may have served as a pleasant, roots-exploring Quinn family vacation, but we the viewers are left with the tedium of watching their home movies.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 dead Eires: 3.
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