In America
"In America" never shows us what life was like for its central family before they moved from Ireland to Manhattan. But it couldn't have been half the lesson-laden, tear-jerking fairy tale that the new Jim Sheridan picture is. The family -- a father, a mother, and two girls (10 and 6) -- has just lost the eldest of its three children, a boy called Frankie, in an accident, and the four have trekked to the States, in part to escape the painful memories, only to find that a change in geography doesn't really spell catharsis the way a spoonful of magic-realist miracles does.
It's hard to dislike a film that wants to say that the bereft have to move on with their lives, that death is part of living, and that poverty is a state of mind. But it's not impossible.
"In America" is based on the move Sheridan made, decades ago, from his native Ireland to New York. He's the enraged citizen behind "In the Name of the Father" and "The Boxer," but writing here with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten, he seems to want to tell a far less wrenching story. Heading this charmed family are the fiercely sympathetic Samantha Morton as mom and the ultra-expressive English actor Paddy Considine as dad. Morton's cropped haircut and achy fragility are from the early portion of the Mia Farrow timeline, and Considine, so memorable in 2000's barely seen "Last Resort," gives as full-bodied a performance as one can playing what amounts to a gauzy yet rosy figment of a father.
This family might be the most blessed immigrants to pull into New York City since the beginning of the 20th century. Their inaugural nighttime drive through Times Square is a traffic-free event. The rundown apartment building they find happens to contain a palatial unit with two bedrooms, lots of windows, and a skylight, which cinematographer Declan Quinn uses for fancy lighting effects. And in the thick of summer when his wife and daughters complain that it's hot, impulsive Johnny (Considine) can be seen dragging a big, old air conditioner on a dolly along a busy avenue -- against the flow of traffic.
Both life and decent screenwriting demand complications, so Johnny tempers his fruitless theater auditions with a more sensible gig as a taxi driver. Is that a complication? Well, he has to work paying jobs because his wife, Sarah (Morton), is pregnant with a child she thinks might replace the one they've lost.
While dad looks for acting work and mom works (OK, hangs out) at the neighboring ice cream parlor, the girls evolve in different directions. The younger, Ariel (the excellent Emma Bolger) harbors a preternatural but wholly legitimate concern that this move and their brother's death are threatening to tear the family apart. When she's not fretting though, she's your average 6-year-old: really into shrieking and discovery. Christy, played by Bolger's oldest sister, Sarah, has worries too, but she pours all hers into a camcorder, which contains footage of her brother, to whom she also prays to grant her three wishes that she later uses to keep her family safe from tragedy.
Christy is our narrator, and, at first, it appears that she will be the truculent sort of girl who refuses to obey instructions. But nobody instructs the girls to do more than have a good time. They run about their filthy, junkie-infested tenement and bang on the all the doors in search of Halloween candy. That search turns up a trick meant as a treat: an HIV-positive African painter who shouts at nothing and is named Mateo. He's played by Djimon Hounsou, a formidable, sexy man with a full face, deep brown skin, and a fiery talent that this movie, like his previous ones, uses as a device.
Mateo functions here as a reminder to the girls and their parents of how precious and exciting life is. But who is this man, really, besides a screenplay's bridge to emotional-spiritual uplift, a holy redeemer? What else has Mateo lived for but to help someone else see the light? Through him the film achieves an unintentional poignancy concerning Johnny, Sarah, Ariel, and Christy's new home: Their America seems so ineffably better than his.
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