Angela's Ashes

by Peter Keough

The Irish have made the most of their misery, transforming it into music, literature, and wit. And bestsellers, as Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, a memoir of growing up desperately poor during the '30s and '40s in Limerick, testifies. It's a litany of woes that would be unbearable if not for the author's lyrical style, his flair for irony and absurdity, and his balming bit of sentiment.

These are qualities that do not always translate well into film, however, as the much anticipated screen adaptation of Angela's Ashes proves. Directed by Alan Parker, whose The Commitments captured modern-day Dublin with grit and verve, this Ireland of a darker day is given a nostalgic, picturesque gloss. The squalor, bitterness, and pain prove very photogenic. Cinematography passes for style, and McCourt's grim childhood becomes a cinematic coffee-table book of bittersweet anecdotes.

There are some powerful moments. The death of McCourt's infant sister while the family were still trying their luck in the USA stings, as does the hypocritical injustice of the smug Catholic charities and their mean-spirited lack of generosity when the family relocate to Ireland. Frank's schoolday run-ins with severe masters crack with savage whimsy, and the inevitable weakness of his charming, alcoholic father, played by an otherwise colorless Robert Carlyle, evokes both pathos and fury.

Maybe it's in the performances that the film is most disappointing -- even the talented Emily Watson as the benighted, indomitable Angela of the title makes no big impression, and the succession of young actors who play Frank at various incarnations have striking faces but are otherwise unmemorable. Often when the places of childhood are revisited years later, they seem smaller than expected, and such is the case with McCourt's memories when reduced to film.