Dancing from stage to screen
- Dancing at Lughnasa
- The Spanish Prisoner
- Mercury Rising
Brian Friel's play, Dancing at Lughnasa, opened in Dublin in 1990
and was a theatrical triumph, both in Ireland and on Broadway. It
tells the story of the five unmarried Mundy sisters who live
together in a house in Donegal in the changing world of the
1930s.
The eldest sister, Kate (Meryl Streep), rules the house with a
strict concern but finds herself adrift when her teaching job is
threatened and a new knitting factory spells the end for the
small income earned by Agnes (Brid Brennan) and Rose (Sophie
Thompson). The household can't survive without money.
From a child's eye a voiceover from Michael (Darrell Johnston),
the illegitimate son of Christina (Catherine McCormack), charts
the family's changes over the summer of 1936. His father, a Welsh
travelling salesman (Rhys Ifans), visits on his motorbike, adding
a dash of fun and danger amid the repressed atmosphere presided
over by Kate.
The sisters' brother, Father Jack (Michael Gambon), returns from
the African missions and brings with him an African view of life
which is a challenge to the repressed Irish attitudes.
The climax of the film, as with the play, is when the sisters
respond to a tune on the radio and begin to dance, building with
a carefree, wild abandon until they end up in the front yard
wheeling and laughing as the music builds. It celebrates their
bond and it is a physical, emotional response to the changing
world which is going to shatter their lives.
Film cannot simply reproduce a play and Frank McGuinness has
written a screenplay which admirably extends the play to fit a
new medium. But it doesn't quite work. For example, the dancing
scene exudes power on the confined space of a stage and cannot
hope to recapture that on the screen.
Moreover, the complexity of relationships in the household is
only touched upon and I came away wishing for a longer, more
densely layered film.
The casting of Meryl Streep in the lead role owes more to the
need to secure US funding than to any artistic reason. She is
adequate but not inspirational. Her accent is passably Irish but
not Donegal (it is better that Kathy Burke's barely subdued
Cockney twang). Other performances are excellent, notably Brid
Brennan, Sophie Thompson and Michael Gambon.
It is a film worth seeing but not a classic.
By Brian Campbell
The Spanish Prisoner, written and directed by David Mamet, is a
complex and gripping but emotionally cold thriller. The movie
stars Scott Campbell as Joe Ross, an economist who has discovered
an elaborate formula that will enable the company he works for to
dominate the global market and reap unprecedented profits.
Naturally, such a formula is much sought after, and secrecy and
paranoia are evident from the outset.
Ross is insecure because the company has yet to place a value on
his services, and this anxiety proves to be his undoing.
The movie centres on his travails, as he is duped time and again,
not knowing until the movie's surprise ending exactly who is with
him and who is out to get him.
A talented supporting cast, including Ben Gazzara and a
convincingly straight Steve Martin, help sell this engaging
feature-length con trick thriller, but Mamet, while succeeding in
giving a sinister edge to all his characters, never fosters
sufficient audience empathy, even with his main protagonist, to
make us really care whether or not he emerges from his nightmare.
By Martin Spain
The latest action vehicle for Bruce Willis, Mercury Rising, is
competent but uninspired, playing like a cross between Witness
and Rainman.
Willis is FBI agent Art Jeffries, disillusioned and reduced to
donkey work after an undercover operation goes wrong, who is
called out to search for an autistic nine-year-old boy, Simon,
played by Miko Hughes, whose parents have just been discovered
shot dead.
The parents are dead, however, because the boy has, incredibly
but unwittingly, managed to crack a top secret U.S. military code
that was thought to be impregnable. The bulk of the movie centres
on Willis's developing relationship with Simon as he tries to
communicate with him and keep him alive. Alec Baldwin is wasted
in a sadly two-dimensional role as the National Security Agency
chief who is willing to kill to protect his code, and although
there is plenty of action and the child generates some empathy,
the conclusion is predictable, there is an overall lack of
innovation throughout. At times during Mercury Rising, Willis has
trouble gaining the attention of his young charge. This reviewer
had similar difficulties.
By Martin Spain
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)