*** (out of ****)
Starring Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Djimon Hounsou, Sarah Bolger, Emma Bolger, and Merrina Millsapp
Directed by Jim Sheridan & written by Jim, Kirsten, and Naomi Sheridan
2002 (2003 wide release)
107 minutes PG13
Let’s see…“In America” has an immigrant family coming to America to suffer the kind of crushing poverty that makes us wince every time they stand near a window with something expensive. The movie puts them in a decaying New York tenement where they meet struggling artists, drug addicts, and other colorful characters. It has unexpected and financially unsound pregnancies, death from incurable diseases, a family carrying all its money in two big handfuls, and despondent moments in the rain, in the face of an uncaring and implacable city. It has parents haunted by the loss of a child, unable to let go. “In America” even has a Magic Negro, a name used by Spike Lee to describe the noble black supporting character who helps the white heroes with their character arcs and epiphanies.
But is “In America” as melodramatic as all that? Not in the hands of Irish writer-director Jim Sheridan (“My Left Foot,” “In the Name of the Father”), who has crafted a gentle story, balancing joy and sadness, not only about the immigrant experience in general but about a family that is looking to come back to life. When we first meet Johnny and Sarah, they are lying to U.S. Immigration as they and their two young daughters drive in from Canada. From there, their experience is not unlike that of many immigrants with no one waiting for them in the new world. They sell their car to make ends meet, they take menial jobs, they suffer summer without air conditioning, and every day becomes a struggle not just to keep food on the table, but to maintain their dignity.
Johnny (Paddy Considine of “24 Hour Party People”) is a stage actor-turned-cabbie, while Sarah (Samantha Morton of “Minority Report” and “Sweet and Lowdown,” here looking much older than 26), once a schoolteacher, is reduced to waiting tables at an ice cream parlor. “In America” is very observant of how both parents and children try to keep things under control. Sarah, with the strength of all mothers, tries to put the best face on everything, in an attempt to lift everyone’s spirits through sheer willpower. She knows that it is only the choice not to despair that keeps them from complete collapse. When she finally tells Johnny that he can never be the actor she is because he is unable to alter reality the way she has, we sense she’s been wanting to say so for a long time.
But Johnny is unwilling to put a good face on things, to let the past go, and to forsake the memory of the dead child they left behind. Complete despair looms over him every day, and with no career, resources, or consumer products to distract him, Johnny seems always on the verge of falling into a peculiarly male kind of operatic self-pity. “I’ve been carrying this family for over a year!” the ten-year-old daughter breaks down and admits, and we realize, without possessions and other worldly doodads, the family is trapped in a void, with nothing to brace itself except its own members.
Into this quagmire steps the Screaming Man (Djimon Hounsou), a possibly mad neighbor who screams and paints and screams some more, at all hours of the night and day. When we first meet him he is sweaty, ripped, and perpetually pissed off, yet the openness of the little girls (real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger) finds a soft heart under his stony exterior. The Screaming Man does not come along to put everything in order, the way a similar character might in a lesser movie. But he does give the family both an objective viewpoint and a foothold into the outside world. Hounsou is able to explore a much greater range of acting here than as Maximus’s ethnic sidekick in “Gladiator,” including a smile which can only be described as disarming.
With its characters turning from one seemingly dead-end situation to another, and poverty waiting at every turn, “In America” is the kind of harsh story that makes us want to turn away rather than watch its people suffer any more. But it is a tender and caring movie, and not one of unremitting gloom. Despite its lack of worldly goods, the family is able to find laughter again and again, in games of hide-and-seek, in homemade Halloween costumes, and in cozy moments at bedtime. While the setting may be contemporary, it is the tale of how many of us came to be in this country, and how many more are still coming.
Finished December 4th, 2003
Copyright © 2003 Friday & Saturday Night
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