Dancing
at Lughnasa
Reviewed
by Leonard Heldreth, September, 1999
Brian Friel's prize-winning play
about a poor family in Ballybeg, Ireland, in 1936 was adapted for
the screen by Frank McGuinness and directed by Pat O'Connor. The adaptation
is faithful to the play, the scenery is beautiful, the acting outstanding,
and yet I found the film slow and my interest often wandering. This
film has all the elements to create a powerful, moving experience,
and yet it fails to strike fire, at least for this reviewer.
The story is narrated at the beginning and end in voice-over,
usually an attempt in film to provide information the director can't
figure out how to give cinematically. Worse, the point of view is
that of an adult male, Michael, who was only a young boy at the time,
and whose memory, whether he realizes it or not, sometimes does not
match up with what we see on the screen.
The setting, plot, and characters all have symbolic overtones
that work much better on the stage than in film, for film is a surface
medium. On stage the claustrophobic setting of the small Irish farmhouse,
as well as Ireland's economic situation and isolation prior to World
War II, supports the main themes of repression, external intrusion,
and disintegration. Forced to live with each other for years, the
five Mundy sisters have developed roles that let them survive. Open
the drama up with motorcycle rides across the rolling landscape and
scenes in other locations, and the vision of entrapment is lost.
The plot is simple enough. For many years five sisters
have lived together and cared for each other, including in the family
unit Michael, the "love child" of one of them and also the
narrator of the film. The stasis of the system is broken up, in classic
text-book fashion, by outside intrusions. Two of the intruders are
standard rogue males: Gerry, the father of Kristine's son, rides up
on his motorcycle (shades of Tennessee Williams) and Father Jack,
the sisters' elder brother, returns from many years in Africa where
he has adopted African religion and folkways, undermining his Catholicism.
A third temporary male intruder is Danny, a man whose wife has left
him and who would like one of the sisters to replace her. The other
intrusions are economic (a new factory threatens the cottage industry
that has helped sustain the sisters, and declining population causes
another to lose her teaching job) and socio-political (the voice of
the outside world, attractive and frightening, is symbolized by an
intermittently functioning radio where the names "Franco"
and "Mussolini" are heard).
These external forces inevitably upset the balance the
sisters have achieved, and by the end of the play only two remain
in the house. Bringing the pressures to a boil, symbolically speaking,
is the upcoming feast of Lughnasa, a harvest festival of dancing and
revelry to the pagan god Lugh, whose rituals still survive in 1936
in rural Ireland. Clearly, this tradition is intended to parallel
Father Jack's African experience and to demonstrate that no matter
how much the Catholic church attempts to suppress the earthly, physical
side of human existence, it will burst forth in pagan ecstasy, as
the central dancing scene demonstrates. Hardly a new insight in Irish
drama.
Given the large ensemble cast, little individual character development
would be expected, and even less is provided. The attempts to break
away from the farmhouse lead to nothing any better, and if the characters
have been somehow internally liberated by their actions, no evidence
of that appears in the movie. The problem is that film is an action
medium, even when it's dealing with larger issues, and the major external
action in this film is a fox breaking into a henhouse and killing
the rooster (I believe I mentioned this film had a number of symbols).
On the positive side, the acting throughout is superb.
Meryl Streep submerges herself into the role of Kate, the repressed
school teacher who tries to control the family; Streep's famous facility
with accents enables her to interact with the four Irish actresses
without a jarring note. The great Michael Gambon plays Father Jack,
the befuddled priest whose brains have been permanently warped by
the African sun, and he makes Jack's bizarre behavior not only believable
but almost understandable. The rest of the ensemble are equally effective
in their roles.
This film is almost redeemed by the acting, and you may
want to see it for that alone. Dancing at Lughnasa is one of those
films that I wish I could have liked better.
