Angela's Ashes
Posted: Fri Jun 08, 2007 5:07 pmAngela's Ashes is a deftly realized and beautifully filmed story of a boy coming of age during the 1930s and 1940s in the Catholic portion of Ireland. We have seen movies of this sort before, and most of them end in an ideological clash between the Irish Catholics and their Protestant counterparts. Here, however, the primary foe is not religious intolerance. Instead, it is one of the oldest enemies of humanity: poverty and hunger. Yet, while the film contains lengthy stretches in which the characters are subjected to ever more demeaning spates of pain and abject misery, the movie as a whole turns out to be a quietly triumphant experience - a testimony to the fortitude of the human spirit under even the worst circumstances.
Angela's Ashes opens in 1935 Brooklyn, where Frank's family is struggling to ward off poverty and disease. Frank's father, Malachy McCourt (Robert Carlyle), is unemployed and his mother, Angela (Emily Watson), has just given birth to a baby girl - the fifth child in the family. But the new addition doesn't live long, and, after her death, the family decides to return to Ireland. As Frank points out in his voiceover, "We must be the only family in Irish history to say goodbye to the Statue of Liberty." As it turns out, things are even worse across the Atlantic. The house into which Frank's family moves is damp, and, due to its proximity to the community privy, there's a permanent stench. When it rains, which is almost all the time, the first floor floods. In quick succession, Frank's two youngest brothers fall ill and die. Meanwhile, every scrap of money that Malachy earns goes to buying a pint or two at the pub. He comes home drunk at night, sleeps wherever he falls down, then spends his days in a fruitless search for a new job. Through all of this, Frank faces the usual traumas of youth: coping with bigotry (Malachy is from Protestant-dominated North Ireland), facing peer pressure, learning about sexuality, and enduring the necessary Catholic rites of passage - especially the First Confession and First Communion.
Angela's Ashes opens in 1935 Brooklyn, where Frank's family is struggling to ward off poverty and disease. Frank's father, Malachy McCourt (Robert Carlyle), is unemployed and his mother, Angela (Emily Watson), has just given birth to a baby girl - the fifth child in the family. But the new addition doesn't live long, and, after her death, the family decides to return to Ireland. As Frank points out in his voiceover, "We must be the only family in Irish history to say goodbye to the Statue of Liberty." As it turns out, things are even worse across the Atlantic. The house into which Frank's family moves is damp, and, due to its proximity to the community privy, there's a permanent stench. When it rains, which is almost all the time, the first floor floods. In quick succession, Frank's two youngest brothers fall ill and die. Meanwhile, every scrap of money that Malachy earns goes to buying a pint or two at the pub. He comes home drunk at night, sleeps wherever he falls down, then spends his days in a fruitless search for a new job. Through all of this, Frank faces the usual traumas of youth: coping with bigotry (Malachy is from Protestant-dominated North Ireland), facing peer pressure, learning about sexuality, and enduring the necessary Catholic rites of passage - especially the First Confession and First Communion.