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Angela's Ashes
**
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by UIP on 14 January, 2000; 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© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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