Word: films
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what they signify would be pointless in this weak cinematic adaptation of the book. What works for the book--different incidents from McCourt's childhood that connect to create a rich, moving mosaic of his life growing up in Ireland--fails miserably on-screen. Episodic and unsatisfyingly static, the film is bound to disappoint fans of McCourt's memoir...
...film opens with a scene of squalor in the McCourt household in 1935. Angela has just given birth to her first daughter, adding to her family of four sons. Shortly afterward, the daughter dies. Unfortunately the viewer doesn't have time to care whether the infant lives or dies, thus revealing the first of many flaws in the film: in adapting the book to film, the filmmakers tried to cram as much of the book as possible into a two-hour movie, and this simply doesn't work...
...director, Alan Parker, worked with Laura Jones to write the screenplay, and the film is very faithful to the book--too faithful, perhaps. Like a complex organ hymn being plinked out on an electric keyboard, the film plays the same basic melody as the memoir but fails to bring out the nuances of McCourt's writing, while these nuances are precisely what made Angela's Ashes a great work rather than a mere string of anecdotes...
...film runs glumly along, episode after episode, with no plot whatsoever. Frank's siblings die at the rate of about one every ten minutes, but the only emotion these deaths manage to evoke is indifference. Along the way the film manages to completely squander Emily Watson as Angela. She makes a valiant effort to portray Angela as a tough woman who's not too proud to beg for her children, but wasted are her sharp, delicate eyes and wonderfully expressive mouth. In fact, the occasional, accidental spurts of beautiful acting she is allowed only serve to frustrate the viewer even...
...messy story-telling and poor characterization in the film are aptly capped off by the worst instrumental soundtrack since Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. One would expect at least a few traditional Irish folk songs, or instrumentals of a somewhat Irish tone; unfortunately, all we get is sweeping orchestral muck more suited for a huge epic than the simple story of one poor Irish family. Not surprising, considering the fact that John Williams, of Star Wars fame, was in charge of the score. Limerick is no Tatooine...