Movie Review: In America

In America
Cast: Samantha Morton, Paddy Considine, Djimon Hounsou, Sarah Bolger and Emma Bolger.
Direction: Jim Sheridan.

I watched this movie at the Angelika in Plano, Tx last week. The broadcast was part of the Auteur film series conducted by the college. The theme of the movie, the trails and tribulations of immigrants in America, sounded interesting and hence I decided to take a look.

Anyway the movie begins with the typical scene of an Irish family illegally entering America from Canada. The protagonist family comprising Johnny and Sarah and their two daughters, the bubbly and outspoken younger one and the silent and introspective older child, are trying to make a new life for themselves in the big city. Set in the mid-1980s the movie portrays three or four major human sentiments: hope, determination, community, frustration and fear.

The family's attempts to settle down in a dilapidated building in which the elevators don't work, there is no air conditioning and erratic water supply evokes empathy from viewers. Personally speaking it came as a surprise that anyone could be so poor in America... and that too in Manhattan...

One of the most touching parts of the movie for me was the Halloween celebrations. The girls go to school dressed in home-made costumes and become a spectacle because everyone else is wearing fancy costumes. And after coming back home the girls decide to go trick or treating in their building and knock on every door in vain. And finally they reach the door of the "the screaming man," a reclusive neighbor named Mateo. This is the turning point of the movie, the reclusive Mateo becomes a family friend and supporter in crisis. He himself is afflicted with AIDS and dieing, but he gives hope and support to the family.

Underlying the plot of the movie the entire family is trying to deal with the loss of "Frankie", who passed away due to brain tumor. While the parents are in denial, the children miss their late sibling. The movie ends with the death of Mateo and birth of another baby girl to the family and the father accepting that Frankie is no more. A very touching movie indeed... must watch in my opinion.