In America 2003
I was told that this movie was a tear jerker but also that it was very good. It wasn’t one I was in a hurry to see, but my girlfriend offered it as a possibility at the video store so I figured why not.
I don’t think tear jerker is a fair description of the movie, but it treads the line very closely between depressing and uplifting. The story centers around a family that moves to New York in the late 70’s from Ireland. The father is an actor so they were going to have a hard time making ends meet anyway. They want to live in Manhattan but the only place they can afford is the top story of leaky building filled with junkies. Oh, and their son died a year or two before the movie starts so they are still dealing with that.
The movie centers mostly on the father, but is told from the point of view of the daughter who doesn’t go anywhere without a video camera (a sure bet that she is the one that made the movie, except that in real life the Irish person that made the movie is a he).
The movie reminds me a lot of the old Westerns about settlers moving out to the promised land and becoming beset with problems. Here the Indians are the junkies in the building who can either be a menace or a good friend. As you watch these people try so hard to make a living in a very challenging environment, you get to really like them and care for them. There is some melodrama at the end, but I don’t think the movie leads up to that so much as it just chooses to end there. It would have been easy to go overboard with some of the material, but they get it just about right with small pieces of happiness scattered through all of the difficulties. This gives it a more realistic texture than most movies. And while it is well executed, it doesn’t take a whole lot of chances or say much that you haven’t seen before (maybe in a western, even). That said, I can’t give the movie an A, but I don’t mind giving it a B+ which is still pretty good.