Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 12, 1993 TAG: 9303120094
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chris Gladden
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PLENTY OF FILMS FOR ST. PADDY'S
A dozen days after St. Patrick's Day, Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan will know whether he has found the pot of gold at the end of this year's Oscar race."The Crying Game," certainly the most-discussed movie so far this year, begins in Ireland and follows its hero to England as he flees his fellow IRA terrorists. Stephen Rea, who plays the Irish gunman with a conscience, is nominated for a best-actor Oscar. So this March could be a happy day for the Irish film industry.
But this controversial thriller is more about surprises and changing perceptions than it is about Ireland.
So if you're looking for a movie that's tailored to the holiday, try some careful browsing among your TV channels and neighborhood video stores. Several pictures can provide the proper atmosphere for a celebratory St. Paddy's day.
Certainly, the obvious choice is John Ford's "The Quiet Man." As has been frequently noted here, this is the perfect St. Patrick's Day movie. John Wayne plays a boxer with a troubled past who travels from America to his mother's homeland to heal his wounded soul. There, he finds a land of wonderful characters, wonderful scenery and stormy romance.
Much more subtle but just as haunting is John Huston's "The Dead." Based on James Joyce's short story, this is a small-scale but elegant movie that looks in on a lively party and then the conversation of a melancholy couple afterward. Full of fine performances and shrewdly observed nuances, this is Huston's last movie.
Nowhere is the ferocity of the Irish artistic temperament better represented than in Jim Sheridan's "My Left Foot." This is the screen bio of Irish writer and artist Christie Brown. Cerebral palsy confined him to a wheel chair, but it couldn't imprison his talent, intellect or spirit.
Ireland is a land of music, and one of its greatest bands is the Chieftains. They provide music for Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon," based on Thackeray's novel about an Irish soldier of fortune. You don't have to be Irish to shed a tear while listening to the unbearably lovely "Women of Ireland."
A movie that approaches "The Quiet Man" in unmitigated charm is Peter Chelsom's "Hear My Song." It's a tall tale about an English nightclub owner who travels to Ireland to coax a legendary Irish tenor and tax fugitive back to England. A story of redemption full of whimsy and inventiveness.
It has little to do with green meadows and thatch-roofed cottages, but I find Alan Parker's "The Commitments" an Irish delight full of humor and the kind of independent characters we associate with Ireland. Parker chronicles the rise and fall of an Irish rhythm-and-blues band.
The music isn't the Chieftains', but it kicks.