Review of Angela's Ashes

For anyone who read the novel by Frank McCourt, `Angela's Ashes' would've been one of the most anticipated movies of the year. The book, which is terrific, takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride without cessation; there are passages so gripping it becomes almost unbearable at times. The movie, however, directed by Alan Parker and starring Robert Carlyle and Emily Watson, unfortunately doesn't come close to capturing the desperation, hopelessness and pathos of the book. McCourt's autobiographical account of growing up in extreme poverty in Limerick, Ireland, is a gut-wrenching experience; that he even survived his childhood under such conditions as he recounts is a minor miracle in itself. His father, Malachy McCourt Sr., (played by Carlyle in the movie), wasn't a bad man, in an evil sense; he was just no good. He loved his family, but was too weak, prideful and irresponsible to even begin to look after them at all. Though reasonably intelligent, apparently, he was nevertheless lazy to the point of slothfulness, couldn't keep a job even if he lucked into one, and most of the time didn't bother looking. He never had money to keep bread on the table, but somehow always managed to have enough for tobacco and for a `pint' at one of the local pubs. Carlyle, a fine actor (great in `The Full Monty'), never seems to get to the core of this admittedly complex character; the ability to mine the depths of what really made Malachy tick somehow eludes him. His performance is passable, but it's all on the surface. Emily Watson fares little better with her Angela. A Gifted actress (Breaking the Waves' and `Hilary and Jackie'), she handles what she is given to work with aptly enough, but there is so much more that simply goes untapped. She, too, never really seems to get to the soul of Angela, whose whole life was nothing less than tragic. And with such rich source material from which to draw, it's puzzling as to how this movie failed to deliver the emotional impact promised by the story. That Parker chose to use the same voice as the novel to tell it is one reason, possibly. The matter-of-fact, stoic narrative that worked to great advantage in the novel simply doesn't translate well to film, at least not in this case. Here, it merely falls flat; somehow it gives an ambivalence to the proceedings that keeps the young McCourt, his family and their circumstances, at arms length throughout. Visually, the movie is stunning, though; the cinematography successfully captures the bleakness of Limerick and the surrounding countryside. Parker, however, fails to blend it all in sufficiently enough with the actual story to make it effective. Using the same approach for visual content as he does for the emotional, he succeeds only in presenting an image without enticement. He asks his audience to bring more to this than they can, given what they are being offered; it simply isn't enough. Still, it in no way diminishes the artistic merit of the photography, which is, in fact, the high mark of this whole endeavor. The young McCourt is portrayed in three successive stages of his youth by Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens and Michael Legge; all able performances. The supporting cast includes Ronnie Masterson (Grandma Sheehan Keating), Pauline McLynn (Aunt Aggie Keating), Liam Carney (Uncle Pa Keating) and Eanna MacLiam (Uncle Pat Keating). For those who haven't read the novel, `Angela's Ashes' will provide some touching moments, though nothing particularly memorable. This should have been a ten-hanky movie; instead, it leaves the tear ducts dry and the heart just a little empty. This is an unfulfilling rendering of McCourt's acclaimed account of his childhood and, on a larger scale, the failure of society and of the Church to truly minister to all it's members. The humor, which is laced throughout the novel, is lost here as well, which is nothing less than negligence on the part of the filmmakers, because they have excluded what was undoubtedly one of young McCourt's basic tools of survival. In the end, then, this film, which should have been remarkable, was one of the biggest disappointments of the year. And it's a pity, yes. ‘Tis. I rate this one 3/10.