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In America ('02).......B

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"IN AMERICA" (2002)

Grade: B
Recommendation: Marginal.
A heartfelt semi-autobiographical story about the first months in America of the Sheridan family. The sensational acting only slightly helps to offset the unmitigated "sturm und drung" that infuses this film from start to finish. Even a somewhat happy ending and the love for life expressed by the two young daughters does little to lessen the emotional pain of viewing this film.

Run Time: 103 minutes
Rated: PG-13, for sexuality, drug references, brief violence and language

Director: Jim Sheridan
Screenplay: Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, and Kirsten Sheridan

Primary actors: Paddy Considine, Samantha Morton, & sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger

RottenTomatoes - 89% Critical Approval Rating
(Anything below 60% is unfavorable)

A movie review by Carl Zapffe (01/04/04)
MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
"In America" is a semi-autobiographical tale about the Sheridan family which details their early years in a New York City sleazy tenement building following the unexpected death of their young son. The sad memories of his death have caused them to flee from Ireland to Canada and then into America as illegal aliens.

This movie is primarily viewed through the eyes of the two young daughters, who view everything in their new life through eyes filled with wonder, trust, and a total child like innocence. Every day is an adventure and every new person, even the strange, angry, and introverted Black man residing in the apartment upstairs, represents just another exciting new meeting waiting to happen.

This movie soars when the two sisters are on the screen, but it also begins to drag when the young couple again and again are forced to deal with the pain and angst of their son's death back home in Ireland and the inability of the father to find meaningful employment as an actor in New York.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"In America" is one of those movies that has much to commend it, apparently enough to command its quite high RottenTomatoes 89% critical approval rating.

Yes, this movie is filled with wonderful acting, but I am left on the emotional outside looking in as the major tragedy happened before the movie starts so we in the theater have little to go on to relate to the heartfelt angst and suffering of each of the members of this family.

The actor Paddy Considine does a wonderful job starring as Johnny, a dad still in torment over the loss of his young son back home in Ireland. His psyche is so burned that he finds it difficult to emote, a factor that makes his securing a job as an actor all the more problematic.

Samantha Morton stars as his wife, Sarah, a nurturing mother who has lost the marital consort of her husband. His emotional and sexual withdrawal coupled with his inability to find gainful employment as an actor causes her even more grief. They could hardly be living any lower on the economic ladder as their new home is a mess of a tenement apartment in a graffiti covered building filled with thieves, beggars, and other assorted scum of life.

[An interesting side note is that this film was completed last year (2002), but not released for some unknown reason. Morton's hair is still very short due to her having just before starred as a "Pre Cog" with a shaved head in Spielberg's wonderful "Minority Report."]

The two young girls in this movie, Christy and Ariel, played by real life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger, provide the only rays of sunshine in this movie. Fortunately, their lives are luminous and captivating and filled with enthusiasm for every new discovery in their new homeland. The Bolger sisters are just incredible in their roles as these two young girls.

As if things already weren't dark enough already for the family, the final straw is the looming financial and emotional burden after Sarah becomes pregnant with a child that the doctor assures her will cause considerable medical complications if carried to term. If the baby is born too soon, it will die. If it is born too late, she will die. Johnny and Sarah have yet to overcome the unexpected death of their young son and now this horror is dumped in their laps.

This movie is filled to brimming with a lot of heavy emotional baggage. Even their new friend, a giant of a Black man upstairs, Mateo (Djimon Hounsou), is under a sentence of death from some unexplained disease.

Yes, there is much to commend about this movie, and I wouldn't be surprised to see an Oscar nod or two awarded to "In America," but it is really a little too much to deal with.

It's kind of difficult to explain this, but my take on this movie can best be explained by comparing it to another movie of a far different subject matter, but one consisting of a very similar dark emotional coloration, and that is the movie, "House of Sand and Fog" (review to follow).

"House of Sand and Fog" succeeds on some levels where "In America" fails because we are part of the developing trauma of that story, an adult story, while in the movie, "In America," we have the emotional baggage dropped in our laps as soon as we sit down. There is no emotional build up, there is no view of what life used to be like before the son died. It's all a "fait accompli" before the movie starts. Furthermore, the trauma in this movie is dealt with on a childlike level by all the participants involved, no matter whether they are the children or the parents.

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