Movies into Film

In America

Directed by Jim Sheridan

UK/USA, 2003

Before It’s Too Late?

Emma and Sarah Bolger (Photo: Fox Searchlight)

It nearly hurts to pan Jim Sheridan’s earnest, loosely autobiographical saga of an Irish family’s immigration to the isle of Manhattan. The first hour of In America contains elements of greatness in both cinematic technique and expressive acting. I sat back, amazed at first. Was it possible that this shopworn story of a young father and mother with two little girls and almost no means to support them could be a bravura piece of filmmaking? Before In America shifts to total saccharine in its second half, the answer appeared to be yes.

Sheridan never makes it clear why the family uproots to start over in a squalid tenement. True, Daddy is an actor who must go on auditions in order to be in the theatre, the legitimate theatre. (He ends up driving a cab.) And how does his clan dodge the I.N.S.? They seem to settle in with no legal problems at all. Those quibbles, however, are minor. Many of In America’s early scenes were breathtaking, such as the family’s nightfall arrival by car in New York. Seen mostly from the kids’ perspective (the girls are aged 6 and 10) the images capture the ecstatic high of entering Manhattan, in all its dingy glory, for the first time. As the pulse of the city revives the passengers, the soundtrack swells with The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Do You Believe in Magic,” and it’s the only time that Sheridan uses a pop song inventively. He later underscores the mother going into labor with The Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn”—an idiotic decision.

In the four leads, Samantha Morton (nicely recovered from Morvern Callar), Paddy Considine, Sarah Bolger and Emma Bolger are excellent. Although, I must say, their acting receives stiff competition from the stunning work of cinematographer Declan Quinn (who leaps from Sheridan’s camera to a handheld and back with the greatest of ease) and editor Naomi Geraghty. Everyone rises to an Olympian height in the brilliantly edited triptych that juxtaposes the parents making love on a rainy night, the girls watching torrents cascade the front window of an ice cream parlor where they wait out Mummy and Daddy’s tryst, and shots of a neighbor, an artist played by Djimon Hounsou, taking a knife to one of his paintings, slashing it across, then letting his blood drip onto a fresh, blank canvas. If the entire film were that consistently daring, then In America would have been a dizzying masterpiece.

Halloween with Daddy, Halloween with Djimon (Photos: Fox Searchlight)

Somewhere, however, Sheridan loses conviction. He exorcises his personal demons before he finishes the picture. Hounsou, who comes on strong when he indulges the girls’ efforts at trick-or-treating in a slum, shouts the film’s single worst line of dialogue: “I’m in love with anything that LIVES!” As if that weren’t enough, Sheridan segues from this overstatement into a school talent show. The 10-year-old stands on stage braying Don Henley and Glenn Frey’s wretched song “Desperado” (the lyrics have always caused me to break into hives), and her parents beam. It’s at this juncture that In America fatally stumbles: you know that the film will take the easy way out. Never mind that it’s inappropriate for a child that age to sing “Desperado,” the mere sound of a little girl’s trebly voice warbling, “You better let somebody love you,” was enough for me to wish for pies to toss. – NPT

November 2003

Movies into Film

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