The characters in Ironweed weren’t always without hope. Each
of them once had the world at their feet, but let it slip away. Now it’s gone,
and it is never coming back. Hector Babenco’s 1987 film of William Kennedy's novel is the story of a man awash
in guilt, sadness and self-loathing, who travels back to the source of all his
pain.
Francis Phelan (Jack Nicholson) first appears awakening from
beneath a blanket of newspapers on a cold, blustery morning. Francis is a bum,
and the film quickly assures us that he has been one for some time. Riding with
his buddy Rudy (Tom Waits) to a job digging graves, we start to realize that
Francis is back in his hometown of Albany for the first time in many years. It’s
here in this cemetery that Phelan starts to shed a little light into his past.
He walks past the graves of his parents, and stops at one belonging to his
infant son Gerald. Gerald was only 13 days old when Francis accidently dropped
him on the floor, killing him instantly. Unable to forgive himself, Francis
left home and disappeared into a miasma of alcoholism and poverty.
Phelan’s companion
Helen Archer (Meryl Streep) has her own history. She was once a promising classically
trained singer and pianist until her own problems with the bottle derailed her.
She has been with Francis for nine years, but still thinks of herself as a
musician. This despite the fact that she is forced to have sex with another bum
in exchange for a warm place to sleep.
The genius of Ironwood is the way it encases these two
shattered people in a world which largely excludes non-alcoholic, non-vagrant
people. In this way, when the two do come into contact with the outside world,
the effect is disconcerting. When their own plight is reflected back to them, the
two bums have to shrink from sight.
Take a scene where Francis takes a job helping a rag-picker
man doing his rounds. At one stop, Francis sees a woman that he knew as a child.
Feeling shamed and self-conscious, he asks not to have to confront her. A
similar scene involves Helen meeting a former acquaintance in a library. Her
self-loathing is palpable here, as she can’t get up and leave fast enough,
muttering about past injustices all the while.
Both Francis and Helen are deep in the throes of alcoholism
and the film takes a little bit of time in illustrating just how far gone they
are. One of the signature scenes in Ironwood is when Helen is asked to sing in
a pub, and she does a rendition of “He’s Me Pal”. As she progresses through the
song, it becomes clear that she has entered a hallucination of herself as a
great artist, and the song ends to thunderous applause. Then, it doubles back
to reality, and we see the truth – A couple of polite claps.
Francis’ alcoholism is built upon the pillars of the tragic mistakes
he has made in his life. Growing up in Albany, New York at the turn of the
century, Phelan seemed to have a bright future. He was a skilled baseball
player who seemed destined for the big leagues. An Albany trolley strike gets violent,
however, and Francis kills a man with a thrown rock. Another man is killed in
self-defence on a freight train. Francis is confronted time and time again by
the ghosts of these men, plus one other unnamed one. And we already can surmise
who the other ghost is. Francis lashes out at these
ghosts, and appears as a madman to onlookers.
The moment that the film builds towards is the time when
Francis goes to confront his family again after being gone for 22 years. It
circles around it a bit first - Francis points the house out at one point. When
the time finally comes, the film doesn’t deal in false sentimentality. It’s
somber in the way that it illustrates people who don’t know how to begin
talking to each other. Francis’ wife Annie (Carroll Baker) is cautious, but is
also clearly happy to see him. His daughter Peggy (Diane Verona) is hostile at
first, but softens. The key encounter here, however, is with Peggy’s son Danny.
He talks to Danny, and gives him an old baseball that he had saved, and it’s
evident that in this child, Francis probably sees a bit of what he has missed
in all those years away. It’s an exquisite scene, full of regret and
melancholy.
The final conversation between Francis and Annie is
poignant, but sadly predictable. Annie still loves Francis, despite everything.
She forgave him for Gerald, and in fact never told anyone what happened. She
even strongly suggests that she would like him to stay. Francis, for his part knows
that that isn’t in the cards. This reunion with his family has been somewhat
cathartic for him, but he can’t allow himself to go back. Others may forgive
him, but he never will. As the film closes, Francis is in yet another freight
train, leaving Albany behind him, probably forever this time. The camera goes
back and shows Danny’s room, as it was shown to Francis earlier, and we hear
Annie’s voice again:
“It’s a nice big room – We could set up a cot in there”
No comments:
Post a Comment