Release Date: November 21, 2003
Starring: Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger, Djimon Hounsou
Directed by: Jim Sheridan
Written by: Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, Kirsten Sheridan
Distributed by: Fox Searchlight Pictures
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (some sexuality, drug references, brief violence, language)
There is a wonderfully unforced quality to Jim Sheridan's low-key, sentimental drama In America, which is about a family of Irish immigrants spending their first year in New York City in the early 1980's. Perhaps it is the lack of big-name stars, or the simplicity of the set design (the family resides in a fourth- or fifth-floor walkup in a dilapidated East Harlem apartment building), or the lack of fanfare with which the characters live. I don't know. But "simplify, simplify," said Thoreau, and his ghost may well have been whispering in Sheridan's ear at the time of filming, because In America is one of those great movies that does a whole lot with very little.
The film begins with our family of four -- the parents, Sarah (Samantha Morton) and Johnny (Paddy Considine), and their two daughters, Christy and Ariel (real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger) -- making a desperate border crossing from Canada into the United States. At the time, the audience isn't quite sure why there is an atmosphere of urgency, only that there is, in what is indicative of director Sheridan's ability to muster emotion and feeling seemingly out of thin air.
The foursome, who are nearly penniless, find a place to live in a crowded building filled with beggars and drug addicts and dying artists. It is a miserable place, and worse, it seems to conduct the wretchedness onto its tenants: when summer arrives, the family finds the humidity unbearable, so Johnny buys a broken-down air conditioner that he must pitifully hoist up a half dozen flights of stairs on his back. Then the plug won't fit the outlet, and since the family is low on cash, he must trade bottles and cans to scrape together enough change to buy a two-dollar adapter. And after all of this, the air conditioner blows a fuse, shorting out the building's electrical supply.
But despite this, the story, which is told from the point of view of 11-year-old Christy, remains curiously upbeat, as though the characters know that they have come very far and that it will take more than a defective air conditioning unit to stop them. In fact, they have nearly been stopped once before. In addition to Christy and Ariel, the family also had a two-year-old son named Frankie, who had a brain tumor and died when he accidentally fell down a flight of stairs. In her narration, Christy talks to Frankie, conjuring him like a guardian angel in the family's most desperate moments -- first, when the family makes their border crossing into the U.S., and later, when Johnny puts the family's savings on a matter of personal pride.
Johnny and Sarah must both swallow a lot of pride, because it's clear that neither is over the death of Frankie. Johnny, an actor, can't get a job when he realizes that he has bottled up all of his emotions following Frankie's death, and instead must take a job as a taxi driver, transporting fares who have only a fraction of his spirit (in one bittersweet scene, a white stock broker gets in the back of Johnny's cab and starts rapping an endless string of nonsensical rhymes; Johnny eventually gets fed up and forcibly pulls the stock broker out onto the street). And when Sarah gets pregnant after a night of passion, she replaces the memory of Frankie with her new baby, infuriating Johnny.
The two adults have their moments, and Considine and Morton are very talented actors, to be sure, but the show belongs to the youngsters, Sarah and Emma Bolger. Sarah, who must play the amazingly mature and resolute Christy, does so with a hidden passion that surfaces toward the end of the movie. All of them have been suffering, but, Christy says, "I've been carrying this family on my back," and there is the immediate sense that what she says is true.
The show also belongs to Djimon Hounsou, who plays Mateo, a hulking artist afflicted with AIDS who lives in the same building. Because the movie takes place in the early 1980's, the understanding of the disease is in its infancy, and it is never named as such in the movie (though astute viewers will quickly guess). Mateo brings a blend of spirituality and mysticism to Sheridan's movie, which was co-written by his daughters Naomi and Kirsten and is a great deal of autobiography. Twice Mateo channels the spirits: once as he thrashes about in his apartment while Johnny and Sarah make love several floors above, and another as the newborn baby struggles for life. The wonderful part about Mateo's character is that he has both literal and fantastical elements, and for the most part, Sheridan allows the viewer to choose which version to accept.
As is so often the case with these kinds of movies, the characters' struggle for a better life is augmented by the gift of new life. This film, too, is the perfect gift of new life for moviegoers who've been bludgeoned with the rusty sledgehammer of studio-produced "human condition" movies. Forget the big-name stars and the directors who favor close-ups of glamorous faces emoting furiously. The low-key approach taken by Sheridan in In America is far and away the better choice.
-- Craig Roush (crr225@nyu.edu)