Dublin-born director Jim Sheridan’s newest film, “In America,” has been stirring audience’s emotions since its opening late last year. Based on Sheridan’s own struggle to survive in the 1980s while trying to pursue an acting and playwriting career, “In America” is a personal film that uncovers the emotional baggage attached to the accidental death of his younger brother. The film focuses on the challenges of an Irish family starting a new, penniless life in New York City. The most poignant and unusual element of Sheridan’s work is the origin of the narrative as told from a child’s perspective.
Co-written by Sheridan and his two daughters, Kirsten and Naomi, he shared the challenges of writing such a personal script in a recently televised interview with Charlie Rose. Sheridan explained his original plan for the movie — a comedy of coming to New York from the father’s point of view (real-life Jim Sheridan) and how his daughters disapproved and then altered the script to focus on their own experience as immigrants in New York City.
Sheridan introduces us to this young family of four as they drive over the U.S. border illegally by masking themselves as jolly Canadian vacationers. Once physically far away from the haunting death of the couple’s third child, Frankie, this family emerges into Manhattan in a beat-up station wagon overfilled with their belongings. Poverty-stricken and desperate for a place to call home, they move into a Hell’s Kitchen apartment filled with small creatures, drug transactions and a multitude of other dangers.
Narrated by the 11-year-old daughter, Christy (Sarah Bolger), “In America” illustrates the immigrant experience from an unusually witty, innocent and insightful perspective. Christy’s charm touches us all — she comically nicknames her family’s junkie-infested building “The house of the man who screams,” after one of the other tenants who periodically emits wrenching, soul-destroying howls. However, instead of simply just offering us satirical comments, her precocious awareness of the family’s wobbly emotional situation is revealed in daily conversations with her dead little brother in heaven.
Like her charming, eloquent sister, 6-year-old Ariel (Emma Bolger) is a magical, adorable and energetic young lady who draws us in with her graceful movements and priceless smile. Whereas more mature characters, such as the father, Johnny (Paddy Considine, “24 Hour Party People”), could have given us a more developed perspective, Christy’s fascination with Manhattan’s bright lights, hustle and bustle, her fearless adaptation to her family’s new neighborhood, and her curiosity with Hell’s Kitchen’s odd cadre of inhabitants provide the audience with a fresh view of the assimilation process.
Although Jim Sheridan’s initial script cast him as the protagonist, the film is stronger and more emotional because of its focus on Christy and Ariel’s childhood musings as their parents are focused on routine, mundane adult activities. While their father looks for work as an actor and their mother, Sarah (Samantha Morton, “Minority Report”), takes a job at an ice cream parlor to bring in some much-needed cash, these two girls stare through large city windows in awe of the delights and diversions of New York — its new cultures, skyscrapers and vibrancy.
When the Sheridan sisters see their father carry a stolen air conditioner across rush-hour traffic or their mother’s labor problems in the hospital, they fail to understand the seriousness of these complex issues and see it as just another adventure. Christy and Ariel’s honest point of view make “In America” an emotional adventure for us all, raising complex family issues in an almost artsy form.
Grade: A
