Angela's Ashes **
Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by UIP on 14 January, 1999; certificate 15; 145 minutes; countries of origin Ireland/USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Alan Parker; produced by David Brown, Alan Parker, Scott Rudin. Written by Laura Jones, Alan Parker; based on the memoir by Frank McCourt. Photographed by Michael Seresin; edited by Gerry Hambling.
CAST..... Emily Watson..... Angela McCourt Robert Carlyle..... Malachy McCourt Joe Breen..... Young Frank Clarán Owens..... Middle Frank Michael Legge..... Older Frank Andrew Bennett..... Narrator Frank Pauline McLynn..... Aunt Aggie
At first, things did not look good for Frank McCourt. The eldest of six children in a poor Irish family, born in America before his parents made the fatal decision to go back to the old country looking for work, he witnessed three of his siblings die before he was old enough to take his first communion. His family, living in Limerick in the '30s and '40s, had to put up with a flooded house next to a communal lavatory, a city plagued by tuberculosis and a man of the house with a fondness for the drink. Malachy McCourt didn't often have a job, but when he did, the wages were spent on Guinness.
And yet Frank did endure, and prevail. He coped with a no-good father, lunatic teachers and bouts of conjunctivitis and diptheria; then returned to America, got a degree, became a teacher and wrote a pair of best-selling autobiographies, "Angela's Ashes" and "'Tis". The movie rights to Frank's memoirs were quickly snapped up -- unsurprising, as tales of hardship, poverty, misery and escape are just what studios need for their Oscar season prestige releases.
The film of "Angela's Ashes" has been directed by Alan Parker, whose credits make him seem ideal: "The Commitments" was an Irish film, "Bugsy Malone" was filled with wonderful child performances and few big movies are as harsh as "Midnight Express" or "Mississippi Burning". Here, however, he doesn't have so much as a basic grasp on the material -- this should not be the story of Frank McCourt's suffering, but that of his survival, and what should be emphasised is the way he maintained his sanity by using gallows humour and ambitious dreaming. Instead, the movie shows us a series of miserable vignettes, which end with Frank suddenly hopping onto a boat to get away from everything.
There is never any rhythm established; Parker has just filmed all the moments of the book that took place in Limerick and edited them together in a way that keeps jumping ahead but still takes two-and-a-half hours to end. He and his co-writer, Laura Jones, should have taken a look at Steven Spielberg's brilliant adaptation of "The Color Purple", another rambling, episodic novel about growing up in brutal surroundings. It makes clear the main character's wish to reunite with her sister, and uses that ever-present desire as the backbone of the film, to give some significance to everything else that goes on. Here, the scenes in America are over before the opening credits, and we're left with no indication that Frank even remembers the place, let alone that he yearns to go back there more than anything.
The film stars Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle, but even the acting is off. People who are unfamiliar with the source material will still be able to detect which lines are direct quotes -- the performers seem to say them in respectful inverted commas, after solemn dramatic pauses. There is no life here, especially not in the narrator, Andrew Bennett, whose flat, forced, monotonous delivery kills every bit of irony and truth the script assigns him.
"Angela's Ashes" is a terrific production, with realistic period detail and atmospheric photography. But it bewilders me that this is the film Parker, one of the best of all working directors, has been so publicly exerting himself over for the past two years. Perhaps he put so much effort into worrying about getting it right that he forgot to actually do so. Is it a dull waste of time, talent and toil? 'Tis.
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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