Not all motion pictures need tons of CGI effects and blue screen shots to keep an audience on the edge of their seats. If a movie is straightforward and devoid of bells and whistles, sometimes this approach can only strengthen its overall impact. Structurally, In America offers a simple plot and does not veer from its everyday subject matter. It is a testament, then, to its performers and its production team, that we come to care so deeply about what happens, in spite of a marked absence of anything more complex than people talking, interacting, and living.
In America is directed by Jim Sheridan, who depicted Irish families and their struggles in My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father. He continues this theme here with similar intensity and prowess. This is certainly a writer/director who sticks to what he knows best. Here, he depicts Johnny (Paddy Considine) and Sarah (Samantha Morton), a young married couple who immigrate to the United States from Ireland after their youngest son has died. They have two daughters, Christie and Ariel (Sarah and Emma Bolger), who have also been deeply affected by the death but seem willing to give the United States the benefit of the doubt and see room for optimism in the move.
Johnny is a struggling actor whose hardship has a direct bearing on his ability to support his family; they move into a run-down building located in the ugly maw of New York City. Junkies and homeless people are at every corner, but Johnny and Sarah aren't terribly over-protective in the new environment. Eventually, Christie and Sarah befriend a tormented neighbour downstairs (Djimon Hounsou), and when his own health comes into question, unresolved feelings of guilt and remorse over the dead son/brother surface. The family must come to terms with its damaged condition and figure out whether it will come out on top.
The movie excels in using detail to convey deep and dark emotional undercurrents. In an early scene that made me want to close my eyes and turn my head, Johnny tries to win a stuffed E.T. doll for his daughter. Throw after missed throw brings the dollar value of the attempts to an outlandish figure, until he puts their very rent money on the line to win the toy. Given the context, we know implicitly how much this means to him and the rest of the family, and it is agonizing to watch and experience the unyielding desparation. In another scene near the end of the film, a moment of staggering power occurs, using the most simplistic of details and setting -- and dialogue, for that matter -- to resolve an important plot thread.
The script was penned by Sheridan and his daughters Naomi and Kirsten, and it is amazing how the characters are written up so that they increasingly learn to see things from another person's point of view. The adults are afforded passages where they must put themselves in someone else's place, and the daughters also share a number of great lines as they try to absorb the different American customs and personalities in their new homeland. The discovery of their very first transvestite sighting or their steadfast belief in all things magical or alien infuse the film with ripe innocence at every turn.
A willingness to submit completely to the emotional machinations of the story is required to be affected by In America. There are times when the cogs in the machinery are substantially visible, but if movies that aim squarely at the heart strings are your bag, then is is one of the best examples of its kind. All of the cast is solid, particularly in those moments when they must have had to find within themselves those dark recesses of experience and magnify them to fit the character and the moment. Visually, the film tempers the ugliness of poverty with the everyday beauty that surrounds us, no matter what we happen to be going through. In America is cathartic, powerful and enriching, unapologetically so, and its message of the importance of a family to heal elevate it beyond the sullied, common realm of cinematic manipulation.
