Customer Reviews

In America

5 star:		(108)
4 star:		(32)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

For sheer catharsis, In America beats every movie I've seen since "The Sweet Hereafter" years ago. Like that movie, it deals with the aftermath of the death of a child; unlike that movie, it comes down (after much agony) on the side of a loving family as the only thing that can heal us.

The Sullivans, a young couple with two adorable daughters, slip illegally into the U.S., moving to New York. In theory this is to help Da start his acting career; in reality, it is an attempt to escape from the sad memories of young son Frankie, recently died at 5 of a brain tumor.

The performances are all, all stunning. Samantha Morton, her hair shorn like a penitent nun's, gives a stunning performance driven by the despair in her eyes. The real-world sisters Sara and Emma Bolger seem completely transparent; they leave the impression they are not acting at all, but really living the loss of their beloved brother. The African actor Djimon Hounsou looms like a sad but powerful diety over the sorrowful family, alternatively reflecting their pain and offering them solace.

The ending will surprise you - I won't give it away here - but it is a sweet resolution. The film seems to have a basis in truth, as it is written by director Jim Sheridan and his two daughters, and dedicated at the end to the memory of Frankie Sheridan (who, as it happens, was Jim Sheridan's brother rather than his son).

Jim Sheridan's IN AMERICA, though you may not realize it when you watch it, is a fable about wishes, dreams, good defeating bad, families growing stronger, love outlasting all adversity and America as the land of opportunity. It's a delightful film, touching without being too cute.

One thing you must realize throughout the film, when it takes turns toward optimism when other films would grow darker, is that the story is told through the eyes of Christie, the 10-year-old daughter of an Irish immigrant family recently relocated to New York. She narrates the story. She speeds it up and slows it down as she needs to. She talks of her sister Ariel's fears, of her mother's strength and of her father's lost smile. And, most importantly, she puts a positive spin on each of her proud family's struggles.

Another director might have taken this same story and gone in a different, darker direction with it. The elements are there, certainly. The family is poor, living in a tenement alongside beggars and drug addicts. Johnny, the girls' father, is an out-of-work actor who's uprooted his family to escape sad memories of his son Frankie, who died. Mateo, the next-door neighbor, and Sarah, the mother, are both faced with life-threatening conditions.

But the atmosphere that Sheridan provides us in this film is comforting and light. The city is enchanting. The tenement is both scary and magical, depending upon the story that Christie is telling the audience. No adult problem goes unsolved for long, even ones that seem particularly bleak. Throughout these positive twists, the importance of the narrator is key. Happy endings are important to a little girl, particularly one who feels so responsible for her own family. At one point in the story, for instance, she saves the family from their latest crisis and relates to her father that she's been the family's savior for a year.

Though it focuses on her entire family, it's Christie's story. And, while she's telling it, it's really moving and uplifting.

The acting here is uniformly terrific. Paddy Considine, playing Johnny the father, is a revelation. He's attractive, strong, a little crazy and yet weighed down by grief. Samantha Morton delivers another compelling performance, yet she comes off here as sweeter and more sympathetic than she did in the disappointing MORVERN CALLAR. Djimon Honsou, best known for his work in AMISTAD, is absolutely spectacular as Mateo, the girls' doomed neighbor. And Sarah and Emma Bolger, real-life sisters playing the girls in the film, manage the difficult task of playing adorable, likable, distinct children without coming off as entirely too precious and cute.

The script is terrific, and the direction is quite good.

IN AMERICA is just lovely.

Just saw this film for the second time at the theater, and the metaphor that comes to mind is that of peeling an onion. The first time I saw the film, the skin of the onion was removed. After the first half of the film it started sinking in that this was no mere string of episodes about Irish immigrants in New York City. It was clear from the first that there was good acting, and I expected only one of those European-style "slice of life" films, but I was delighted that the story actually built up a direction and a momentum and built to a truly impressive conclusion. Shakily photographed opening scenes turned out to be a deliberate and very appropriate work of craftsmanship linked into the heart of the film. The weirdly filmed sensual bedroom scene turned out NOT to have just been tossed in for its own sake, but rather was essesntial to set up symbols for the second half of the film. Not every note of the film rings true, but in the second half, once the characters are established, we find elements of mysticism and heartbreak mixed with textures of wonder and grit. I knew I had to go back and peel away another layer. Upon a second viewing, the spiritual/religious references were revealed more clearly, and I was convinced that my emotional response had been no mere fluke of mood or of the actors alone, but that this is actually a work of art, carefully set up with multiple layers and levels of understanding. Motifs and metaphors of blood, home, planets, aliens, angels, and place will be more carefully explored on my next viewing, for they all clearly have deliberate meaning. Even the setting of the "Hell's Kitchen" neighborhood is significant, because the film's setting is staged as a kind of purgatory for all of its characters as their mundane world becomes repeatedly touched by transcendent observations and events, as they must all come to grips with the ways in which life and death touch each other. This is an awesome film whose themes and emotions go well beyond what most films will even attempt, although the film repeatedly shows restraint to try to keep such portrayals from appearing over-the-top. But the seeming restraint does not dampen its emotional impact. For those who are comfortable with a sense of spirituality that does not stem from specific points of doctrine (indeed, for which doctrine could be seen as needlessly limiting an appreciation of experience... of reality) this is a film that can be considered authentically religious. Religious NOT in some simple sense of simply saying "let us pray," but in a real-life and complex, challenging way... in which the kingdom of heaven is within, in which God acts through people, and through imperfect people loaded with fears and doubts and pain but who must find ways to express hope and charity in spite of this. This is a great movie...well worth repeated viewings as viewers explore its many nuances and challenges. After all, when one sets about peeling onions, it has this way of making the eyes water up, and that sort of cleansing effect is what this film is really about. The cleansing and watery eyes are no mere surface effect. The cleansing is meant to go very deep.

Bravo!

IN AMERICA has heart, extraordinary writing, superb acting, admirable cinematography by Declan Quinn, and, in short, everything that "small films" attempt for, in abundance. Based on autobiographical material this screenplay was written by Jim Sheridan (who also directs with great sensitivity) and his two daughters. The story is that of an Irish family - a man and wife and thier two daughters - who swallow their recent loss of their only son and emigrate from Canada to America. The story is related through the tender eyes of the older daughter, who in the manner Irish holds three wishes bestowed by her brother's death. How she uses those wishes in the Americanization of the Sullivan family forms the story line. Against all the odds that so often impale immigrants to this country - inability to find decent housing, work, friends etc - this warm family's plight is magnified by the fact that they must learn to exist in a sleazy tenement building. Father is a wannabe actor who ends up driving a cab at night, the girls struggle with the new way of language and living, and the mother longs for another pregnancy to help fill the void of her lost child. They are befriended (mutually) by an African artist who lives below them and who eventually becomes a significant part of their extended family. To tell more would be unfair, as it is the tragedy and how it turns that makes the movie glow.

Samantha Morton and Paddy Considine as the parents are as fine as actors can get. The daughters are played with impeccable grace and skill by Sarah and Emma Bolger, and Mateo (their new fried) is the creation of the beautiful actor Djimon Hounsou who shines in this pivotal role. This story is related with underplayed sensitivity and heartwarming tenderness. Rarely has a film found an audience that is almost uniformly moved to quiet tears during the credits. Would that there could be more honest, thoughtful, touching films like IN AMERICA to tend to the bruised psyches of us all. Kudos to Jim Sheridan and his enormously gifted cast and crew - and to his courage to pursue this project.

There are films that are so humane, and make us love their characters so deeply, that they make us better people (at least temporarily) just for watching them. "In America," Jim Sheridan's semiautobiographical movie about about an Irish family in Manhattan in the early 1980s, is one of those films. The Sullivans--father Johnny, mother Sarah, small daughters Christie and Ariel--are still shell-shocked from the death of the family's young son from a brain tumor. They live in poverty in a Lower East Side tenement--the father, an actor, endures a futile daily grind of auditions while driving a cab to make ends meet. Told mostly from Christie's standpoint, "In America" is the story of how the Sullivans fare in their exciting but threatening new home, and of the friends they make--particularly Mateo, the artist dying of AIDS who lives on the floor below. Making Christie the narrator was a master stroke, for the film's touches of magic realism are all the more believable for being a child's perceptions. (One unforgettable scene makes a baseball-toss game at a street fair the subject of unbearable suspense.) "In America" never puts a foot wrong, in its direction, writing or acting; all the performances, unfussy and emotionally direct, seem to be lived rather than acted. The adult actors--Paddy Considine as Johnny, Samantha Morton as Sarah, and Djimon Hounsou as Mateo--give astonishingly strong, moving performances. The children--real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger as Christie and Ariel--are as enchanting as any child actors who have ever stood in front of a camera. "In America" isn't for the "Little House on the Prairie" crowd--the emotions and situations it depicts are messy, and the only sugar in the script is in the ice-cream sundaes Christie and Ariel eat. But love and forgiveness are in abundance here, as are faith, hope and charity. "In America" bears comparison with Elia Kazan's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," another, much older movie about an Irish family in a New York tenement. Both have the same level of unsentimental poignancy and meticulous craft.

I have read a couple reviews in which people commented on how unrealistic parts of this movie was: how the junkies in the neighborhood would have been much worse in real life, how the air conditioning scene was unrealistic. Please. Anyone who wastes their time analyzing a movie based on its realism, unless it is advertised as "A 100% TRUE DOCUMENTARY", should be thrown from the Empire State Building. (As a side note, just last week I walked 4 blocks with an air conditioner in tow and dealt with the 'plug' issue...after which I had to take about 10 showers to cool down.) The acting of the children, as mentioned, was wonderful and believable. The adults paled in comparison, but any quirks can be overlooked. If you don't like this movie, as several people have mentioned, then you truly are cold blooded and heartless. I think these negative reviewers were angry that the city, while full of promise, did not eventually suck all the life out of the family and leaves it in shambles. Well, sorry! NYC, with all its flaws, really does have a big heart for people who are willing to share theirs. Like any place and any time, sometimes life doesn't work out like a fairy tale. Well, neither does this story - but it does offer a positive message of hope and family and shows that good things DO happen to good people. Be warned, I cried through at least 50% of the movie and I'm a big macho dude! I loved it and will recommend it to everyone I know.

'In America' is a quasi-autobiographical work penned by director Jim Sheridan and daughters Naomi and Kirsten (herself a director). I added "quasi" because a little research turns up that Jim Sheridan had a brother Frankie who passed away in tragic circumstances (I'm not giving anything away by telling you that). That character woven into the 'In America' story in conjunction with the story that is obviously the current Sheridan family's own: Irish mother and father with two young girls in tow trying to make it as immigrants in a hardscrabble NYC neighborhood in the early eighties.

Real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger play what are obviously the on-screen portrayals of Sheridan siblings Kirsten and Naomi. Emma - playing younger sister Ariel - is adorable right from the get go. Older sister Sarah is the mature, world-weary (but still sweet) Christy. When she tells her father "I've been carrying this family on my back for over a year," believe it. And don't miss her stark, beautiful rendering of 'Desperado.' Perfect.

In case you can't tell, I was enchanted by these two girls. But Samantha Morton is a treat, too. She was wonderful but obscured as the pre-cog in the fine Cruise/Spielberg film 'Minority Report.' Here, she's front and center and luminous.

I missed IN AMERICA when it was in the theaters, and I vowed not to miss it when it was released in DVD. The reviews of the film were excellent, and I knew I would enjoy an Irish family moving to the United States. I decided to purchase the DVD rather than rent it, knowing that when I saw it I would enjoy it, complain about a few clichés, and put it away to view it again in a year or so. I certainly expected it to be somewhat lighter fair, in the same category as WAKING NED DIVINE. I was hardly prepared for the dramatic intensity of the film.

The story tells of a young couple, Johnny and Sarah Sullivan (Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton respectively) who move from Ireland to New York with their two daughters after the tragic death of a younger son. The parents are too busy trying to care for the children to attend to their own grief which provides for much of the film's conflict. The two daughters Christy and Ariel, played by real life sisters Emily and Sarah Bolger, are endearing, and see a magical side to an area of New York most people would avoid at all costs. This seems to be due less to the fact that they have left rural Ireland for the big city (Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Limerick have their share of seedy neighborhoods infested with drugs and poverty), but rather it is due to their outlook on life. The family befriends a neighbor who is dying from AIDS who allows the family to deal with its own loss and celebrate life once again.

While the plot of this movie has been retold in many different ways in film and literature, IN AMERICA has many qualities that make it outstanding. Writer and director Jim Sheridan is able to capture the girls' innocence remarkably well. Johnny and Sarah are authentically Irish yet they have a universal appeal. New York City is colorful even in the midst of pain and tragedy. Family life is celebrated yet the conflicts are real. Perhaps what made this film most outstanding in my eyes is that even though I instinctively knew how the film would probably end, it still held my interest and had a degree of suspense to it. This only happens when a film captures a viewer's heart while respecting the viewer's intelligence.

An Irish family comes to America after a tragic event. In the center of Hell's Kitchen they try to come to terms with their grief and maintain the strength of their family. They move into what is know as the "junkie house". Told from the perspective of the eldest daughter, Christy, who records their lives via camcorder.

"Mom" (Sarah Sheridan) played by Samantha Morton (most recently seen in Minority Report) is a teacher in her homeland but has to work as a waitress. "Da" played by Paddy Considine is Johnny Sheridan a struggling actor and taxi driver. The charming children are played by Emma and Sarah Bolger. Little Sarah Bolger is a scene stealer that could melt the most frigid of hearts.

Mateo is the tortured artist/neighbour who is first befriended by the children then the parents. He gives them a new perspective on life and living. Mateo is played by Djimon Hounsou the "Not yet" actor from Gladiator. Djimon is thrilling and captivating as he is in all his movies.

This story is beautifully written, casted and filmed. It was written and directed by Jim Sheridan and is pseudo-autobiographical. Sheridan is know for his writing and direction of In the Name of the Father and My Left Foot. He wrote In America with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten.

The movie's characters are transformed by many human emotions: love, friendship, grief, forgiveness, rediscovery, mutual respect, and laughter. Be prepared to laugh and cry sometimes both at the same time but at the end your heart will feel fuller.

Jim Sheridan's "In America" is a deeply personal film that boasts some of the finest ensemble acting of recent years. It is a film that chronicles the agonizing struggles experienced by immigrants new to America. It is also a film that illustrates how important it is to retain a measure of hope and faith in our lives.

Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah Sullivan (Samantha Morton) are Irish immigrants who come to America with their two young daughters, Christy and Ariel (Sarah and Emma Bolger). Nothing comes easy for the new arrivals as the family is forced to live in a run-down tenement with little money for necessities. The situation becomes bleaker as Johnny can't find work as an actor, the daughters have some trouble fitting in at school, and the air conditioning unit burns out in the middle of a heat wave. Furthermore, the family has a mysterious neighbor named Mateo (Djimon Hounsou) who comes to be known as "the man who screams." Yet even with all this adversity around them, bits and pieces of joy start to creep into the family's lives and soon they find the collective strength to come to grips with a tragedy in their past and to embrace their new lives in a new land.

The performances in "In America" absolutely sparkle. Considine and Morton are excellent as the parents with Morton in particular further cementing her reputation as one of the best actresses working today. Hounsou finally finds a role that enables him to follow up on the potential he displayed in "Amistad" (1997) and he makes the most of his opportunity. But it is the Bolger sisters who steal the film. Both Sarah and Emma are astonishing in their roles and their sincerity and sweetness infuse "In America" with a degree of honest emotion that is so very difficult to capture on celluloid. In addition to its solid writing, directing, and acting, this film also has the surprising effect of increasing one's affection for both E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and the song "Desperado." Just remember that if you feel you must obtain an E.T. plush doll for yourself, avoid the drama and just buy one at a store instead of trying to win one at a game booth.