In America

I’ve just returned from In America, a charming, innocent and very personal film by Irish director Jim Sheridan. It tells the story of a young Irish family who, having recently suffered a tragedy, start a new life in America. It’s one of the better written films I’ve seen in some time. The dialogue is natural but sparse, and the movie’s structure is seamless. It’s one of those rare films where the story actually benefits from the narration.

The acting, as well, was extraordinarily natural and subtle. The two leads–Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton–shine as young parents putting on a brave face for their children. In Morton’s case, especially, you can sense the profound sadness that lies behind every forced grin. Like Helena Bonham Carter, Morton plays tragedy very well–I can’t think of a more naturally melancholic actress. I haven’t seen her in anything that asks something different of here, and would like to.

The Bolger sisters play the daughters, and are central to reinforcing the movie’s theme of the invulnerability and insight of childhood. They’re both excellent, but in markedly different ways. I’ve always had a theory that young children don’t go through the intellectual process of acting the way adults do. They just make believe convincingly. This isn’t a criticism–in fact, we often get extremely genuine performances out of small children because that veil of self-awareness hasn’t descended on them. It’s like they’re acting before the Fall. This is true of 6-year-old Emma, while 10-year-old Sarah seems to have made the leap to adult acting.

The film is set in New York, but you’d never know it. I have disdain for films which waste time depicting ‘New Yorkness’. You know the drill–skyline, Central Park, drug dealer, skyline, grumpy ethnic taxi driver, street vendor, skyline, Korean store owner, skyline. If you’re not Woody Allen or Spike Lee, these sequences just become tiresome and wrote. Fortunately, Sheridan avoids these cliches.

He may do so because the film is set in 1982, but you’d never know it. Early in the film, as the kids stare wide-eyed out the window at Times Square, it’s got a decidedly 2002 look about it. The costume design, as well, seems overly modern.

My only other complaint is about the subplot, which features (as another writer put it) a Magic Negro. Djimon Hounsou is an excellent actor, but his scenes seemed a touch trite and forced.

These are, however, minor complaints about a film that brilliantly renders a family’s struggle to cope with tragedy and the American immigrant experience.