Angela's Ashes (1999) - Movie Review
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The most noticeable thing about Angela's Ashes is the dreary splashes of pale blues and grays. There is hardly a moment in the film where the weather is sunny, and it is raining most of the time. I hear Ireland is a pretty damp place, but I doubt it rains as much there as it does in the movie. However, I do feel that it is an adequate exaggeration of Frank McCourt, since it probably did seem to rain everyday to him. Nearly every setting is dreary and rotten, only personifying Frank's hatred of the country. Or at least of his life.
With exception to a few over-the-top performances, the actors in Angela's Ashes do a believable job. Robert Carlyle (The Full Monty, The World is Not Enough) is the most standout figure, playing Frank's dad. Frank loves him but at the same time hates him because Dad always wastes their precious money on booze. Emily Watson is another person who has been seen before, and she is the title character, Angela. She is Frank's focus because through all the years, no matter how tough, Angela tried to keep the family together and alive anyway she could. She resorted to begging and to other things to protect her children. Three boys play Frank, Joseph Breen, Ciaran Owens, and Michael Legge. To compare them, Owens does the best job, but all three are noteworthy.
The only thing I found surprisingly was how little the brothers were featured in the story. Whether Frank's memoirs of his brothers were cut out of the movie or were not included in the movie puzzles me. However, I am sort of thankful since the movie does run for a 145 minutes, a good 25 minutes longer than it should. I had no trouble watching Angela's Ashes but a 145 minutes is still a long time for a movie of this sort. The running time is probably one reason why this film suffered at the box office.
Angela's Ashes suffers from length but does not suffer in presentation, showing Frank McCourt's life as a child in Ireland.
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Anonymous says:
August 7, 2006You saw the movie but you would never read the book? What kind of asinine statement is that? The book is so much better than the movie was. But, of course, we in North America live in a society that only wants instant gratification. Frank McCourt's books made me laugh out loud. His book "'Tis" made me laugh until my belly was actually sore. Yes, Angela's Ashes is an extremely sad story, but it is also a first-hand account of the ills which befall a country where the Roman Catholic Church has such a stranglehold over its populace. Frank made me hope with every fiber of my being that on the Judgment Day, the true God will make those bastards, the Catholic clergy, pay for the extreme cruelty and poverty that existed in Ireland when Frank was a child. That a mother should have to beg in the streets is an atrocity - no matter what century or decade. I love Frank McCourt, and I was moved by his written word more profoundly that I can possibly explain, probably because my childhood was not the greatest either. Frank is wrong about one thing, though. There ARE worse childhoods than the one he had because I lived it.
Anonymous says:
January 12, 2004This must have been one of the best movies i've seen in my life,i've also read the book and i really loved it,too.I think all this misery made me think a lot,and the sets,casts,everything are claming ''worth seeing! ''