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Exquisitely depressing, Angela's Ashes is the feel-bad film of the year. Director Alan Parker's beautifully photographed, finely acted adaptation of Frank McCourt's Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir about growing up poor in Ireland is lyrical, haunting, evocative and intelligent. But as the Irish might opine, "Oy vay is it sad."
Mercilessly pressing his excellently made points, filmmaker Parker takes the notion of gloomy to new and exponential lows. And though the first-person narrative interjects veritable jewels of dark humour throughout the telling, full comedy relief is rare. The totally absorbed viewer soon learns that surviving Mr. McCourt's saga requires finding shards of solace among its slimmest glimmers of hope. Knowing that the author ultimately survived his horrible childhood and grew up to write this widely heralded account also helps.
The thing is, it's all too terrible not to be true, and the beauty of its genuineness, evident in practically every scene, must win our admiration. But what a hefty price the writer/protagonist paid for the character he eventually acquires.
After a short stint in the United States where little Frank's father, Malachy (Robert Carlyle), can't seem to support his growing brood, the star-crossed family goes against the conventional grain and returns to Ireland. Of course, things only get worse back in Limerick. Dad rarely finds work, and when he does the pattern seems inescapable: taking his first pay to the pub, which soon renders him useless, he is inevitably fired for not showing up the next day. Angela (Emily Watson), a study in stoical martyrdom, has come to expect no more from her husband.
Residing in "the lanes," a euphemism for the vile Limerick slums where the McCourts dwell in abject poverty, their ranks are repeatedly thinned as the less hearty children fall victim to the inhumane conditions. We count the progression of little coffins. Hunger and illness are a way of life, heating coal is a luxury, it is forever raining, and the sanitary system consists of little more than carelessly emptied chamber pots. To just barely subsist, Angela relies on terribly humbling admissions before the church charity board, while Dad is forever on the dole.
A very different coming-of-age chronicle, Angela's Ashes consists not so much of a traditional plot, but rather a succession of challenges Frank (nicely portrayed by four different boys over the years) must face if he is to maintain at least a semblance of dignity. This includes a series of brutally cruel teachers, a Catholic Church that practices class distinction, a first love surrounded by tragic circumstances, and a slovenly relative who shamefully compromises the family's self-respect in return for shelter. The list of trials and tribulations goes on and on like the ordeals of a daytime soap. Except that it's painfully real. And though the story hardly hints at a way out for our little hero, one still can't help but root for Frank to pull himself up from the muck and mire of his dire circumstances. He just has to. Our emotional well being, nay, our very sense of humanity, demands it.
But then you don't need a degree in literature to realise that Mr. McCourt's heartfelt account is much more than what it appears to be on the surface. Great works usually are. This isn't merely a modern Irish take on David Copperfield or Great Expectations. And certainly it tells a story bigger than the biography of one poor boy. Rather, it is the tale of all the little boys and girls who were ever deprived of a decent childhood by the uncaring barbarism of poverty. McCourt approaches destitution with a deep and knowing passion. And because he is so depressingly accurate, he needs not embellish to properly abash concerned audiences.
It's the kind of moral instruction that leaves indelible images: Frank and his little brother Malachy in the school playground, ashamed of the absurd make-do shoes their father cobbled together out of an inner tube; Mother Angela begging for leftover scraps outside the priests' residence; or the teen-aged Frank after he leaves home, so hungry that he feverishly licks the pages of the newspaper that just recently held his Uncle Pat's fish and chips.
Even the most cynical of moviegoers will leave the theatre musing, "There, but for the grace of God..." and vowing, at least until an after-show snack distracts them, to do their part to fight penury. The film is that affecting. Because we all know in our hearts that no matter how politicians paint it, re-categorise it or statistically sweep it under the carpet, great want still spreads across our country from ghetto to crime-ridden ghetto. And though poverty in any shape or form is unacceptable in an enlightened civilisation, Frank McCourt's searing example of British socio-economic crimes against Ireland reminds that governmentally perpetuated poverty is the most heinous variety of all. If Dante were to update the nooks and crannies of his underworld, surely he'd reserve a special place for impoverishment's political accomplices.
Insofar as the greatest non-question of them all: Is it better than the book? The answer is, doubtful. Unless one is an absolute dolt, there is no filmmaker who can compete with the artistic subjectivity of the human imagination. Only poorly written books turn into better movies. Still, accomplished director Parker (Bugsy Malone, Midnight Express) knows his way around a can of celluloid. And he understands the possibilities, as well as the limitations, of his medium. Adapting the work with screenwriter Laura Jones, he makes sure we get the message.
And we wonder, right now, right here, how many needy little children are out there, buried under the camouflage of deceit and bureaucracy, trying to escape what claims to be their sealed fate? A fine muckrake in the Dickensian tradition, perhaps from Angela's Ashes will rise a phoenix of renewed compassion and caring. For Frank's sake.
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