September 13, 2002

In America
(Fox Searchlight) Rated NYR
Release Date: April 25, 2003

After days of chatter about the crowds the industry/press screenings, things eased up on Thursday.  And the focus returned to film.  For me, one film in particular.

Jim Sheridan’s newest, currently titled IN AMERICA, arrived quietly, but damned if it isn’t one of the very best films in the entire festival. More, it is easily the most Oscar-likely film to turn up at Toronto this year.  I mean, this thing stinks of nominations.  Best Picture, Best Director (Sheridan), Best Screenplay (Sheridan and his daughters Kirsten and Naomi), Best Cinematography (Declan Quinn), Best Production Designer (Mark Geraghty), Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou) and Best Actress (Samantha Morton)… for starters.  (I wouldn’t be surprised if Morton double dips with a Supporting Actress nomination for Minority Report.)

Telling the story is a mistake of sorts, as the movie is more than its story.  This is Francis Coppola level filmmaking, representing a major jump, in my opinion, for Sheridan.  The screenplay is one of the most beautifully structured screenplays without feeling structured at all… it’s not a stunt.  But the five main characters each rise and sink, filling their places in this family as fate demands, working as five separate batteries, each absolutely necessary to power the drain of life in a new country and a city like New York.  

That’s as much of the story as you need to know… a family of four – mom, dad and two daughters – come to New York from Ireland, the father dreaming of a career on the New York stage.  Beyond the adjustment to a new life and drug-addled neighbors, this family carries another weight… the memory of a dead child.  But they will be a family and they will survive… together… no matter what, together.  (There are interesting coincidental connection to the black comedy/drama The Secret Lives of Dentists from Alan Rudolph, which may have been picked up by the time you’re reading this.  But the films go in very different directions.) 

Tears will flow for many audience members in the third act, but this is not a film of draining weight.  This is a story of laughter and reality and deep, deep unshakeable love.  And, in an odd way, this film is the perfect answer to 9/11, though it never refers to that day in any way.  This is a film about immigrants and the American dream and ethnic diversity and not really noticing ethnic diversity as anything more than human diversity and secrets and family and staying awake in the unending, emotional-sleep-inducing din of New York.  This is a film whose basic avoidance of jingoism allows us to keep our defenses down and to find our inner humanity in the humanity of these people.

I have been citing Kirsten Sheridan’s Disco Pigs – never released domestically – as an influence on her father’s film, even before I knew she was a co-writer.  And I think the daughter did help the father’s growth.  Kirsten showed a fearlessness about magical thinking in her film and, while it is tempered here, it is still right there under the surface.  This is a place where individual moments can change the course of lives with startling simplicity.  While we rarely admit to the drama of out own lives – or alternatively, overstate it – these magic moments of change sweep through all of our lives every day.  It’s just that these characters are occasionally able to see them as they happen.

Now… here’s the rub… Fox Searchlight currently has this film scheduled for Spring 2003.  That would mean no Oscars in this year’s race or next year’s race.  And that would be a damned shame.  Searchlight is currently enjoying an embarrassment of riches at this festival.  Bend It Like Beckham is getting lusty cheers at every screening.  The Good Thief looks like a small hit and Nick Nolte could well end up with a Best Actor nomination… if he’s not in too much trouble.  Antwone Fisher is being unveiled tomorrow.  But In America is THE MOVIE. 

Make no mistake.  A cursory glance at this year’s Oscar race shows a dearth of “regular” dramas.  Much as I like Moonlight Mile, I think that acting and writing nods are all that should be seriously hoped for there.  The Hours has created questions for itself.  Antwone Fisher and Narc are both street dramas.  Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can and Road to Perdition are overdogs.  But In America is a film that Academy members can “discover” and make their own.  And it is driven by that rarest of commodities in America film today… real, unabashed, unashamed emotion.