| Reviewer Roundup |
| 1. |
 | Susan Granger |
| review follows |
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| 2. |
| Harvey Karten |
| read the review |
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Review by Susan Granger
3 stars out of 4
Whereas a novel is written to be appreciated for its language
and literary integrity, a movie is a visual medium. Most often, the
books that make the best films are those with clear narratives and
focused stories. In Angela's Ashes, author Frank McCourt put the
entire story inside the mind of a character and focus solely on that
character's inner world - what he is thinking, feeling,
remembering. While filmmaker Alan Parker has dealt with the Irish
before in The Commitments, he now, working with writer Laura Jones,
meticulously evokes McCourt's saga of poverty, pain, ignorance, and
the death of three children. But their anecdotal screenplay fails to
capture the Irish-American writer's lilting wit and emotional
poetry. The story begins in 1935 in Brooklyn as the titular Angela
(Emily Watson) falls apart when her baby daughter dies, and the
family, consisting of her irresponsible, alcoholic wastrel of a
husband (Robert Carlyle), Frank and his brothers, goes back to
Limerick, Ireland. As McCourt noted in his opening paragraph, that was
a big mistake. Life in the miserable, wet, filthy Roden Lane slum -
painstakingly recreated by production designer Geoffrey Kirkland and
captured by cinematographer Michael Seresin - is awful, and, at
school, Frank's teachers are either religious or nationalistic
fanatics. It isn't until he's a teenager, working as a mailman, that
life begins to hold possibilities, particularly the promise of
returning, alone, to America. Three actors - Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens,
and Michael Legge - play Frank as the resilient boy-to-man who bravely
copes with his dysfunctional family and rises above his terrifying
travails. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, Angela's Ashes is a
respectful but depressing, grim 7, giving one a greater appreciation
of America as the land of hope and promise.
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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