Two more movies to take you far, far away.
The Secret of Roan Inish (1993; Hoopla, Peacock I think)
A ten-year-old girl goes to live with her grandparents on the Irish coast and comes to know the sea, seals, and strange tales of her family that might change everything. This is a delightful blend of family film and fantasy, a heart-warming tale of family and home punctuated by adventure and mystery. Heidi meets Ichabod Crane. I studied the director/writer (John Sayles) in graduate school, when I did a paper on the three Spanish-language films he made in Mexico, but this film is a new one for me. I appreciate how he pays attention to inequalities of money, diversity of languages, and nature-geography. His portraits of cultural and historical moments are high definition and three-dimensional.
This week a fellow Spanish professor told me how she teaches her Spanish students about folklore, drawing on the book Folklore Rules (McNeill, 2013). Folklore is informal culture: what we say, what we do, what we believe, and what we make. “Folklore”—that’s it. That’s what John Sayles loves, whether it’s singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” before an American baseball game or acknowledging the Virgin Mary before bedtime or recounting a legend of the selkies. It's when culture gets down-to-earth, local and concrete. It’s the flavor of everyday life that makes it feel like home. The Secret of Roan Inish is special because it brings out the fantastic wonder in this everyday life until you are not sure where one starts and the other leaves off.
This movie is also special because it works better than most John Sayles movies. He has the (bad) habit of writing movies with 8 main characters, Stagecoach-style. This gives his movies incredible interpersonal variety, but is also means you have to watch the movie multiple times to even keep track of who is who, and in the meantime you will have a hard time following the story because each character has his or her own story. Instead, Roan Inish establishes a through-line, a connecting thread linking all the family members and their stories—Fiona, a sort of Alice in Wonderland whose winsome humble confidence could carry the movie all by itself.
For sensitive viewers: Some strange mythical tales about losing a baby to the sea and marrying a seal-woman. Both are presented visually—just PG, but they have an other-worldly feel. A brief fight when a young man is mocked for his Irish language. A man uses a knife to cut fish open at his work. As for alcohol, the girl’s father is seen at a bar, as his lack of responsibility is why she needs to move.
Stagecoach (1939; Hoopla, Tubi, YouTube, Amazon Prime)
In the Old West, nine passengers take the stage to the nearby fort to escape the coming Apaches, and on the way their hidden backstories begin to come to light. Some movies are so special that they represent an entire genre on their own. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), adventure; The Lord of the Rings, fantasy epic. For Westerns, Stagecoach is that movie. John Wayne stars, not in his first Western, but in his first great one. Director John Ford captures the iconic Monument Valley that will define his Western look for decades. Sweeping, triumphant music. And all the basic Western character tropes—the noble outlaw, the drunken doctor, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the uncharacterized mass of Native peoples threatening to attack—are branded on the screen with hot iron.
While it doesn’t show on the surface of this movie, John Ford had a very amiable relationship with the Navajo people who lived at Monument Valley. His Westerns consistently hire them and present increasingly nuanced portrayals (see this article). That’s not to say that his movies are perfect in this regard. But I think that even in Stagecoach there is something humanizing in the way these otherwise anonymous people are filmed: their first appearance looking down from the heights, still, calculating, with close-ups of individuals. Powerful, intelligent, and looking back at us.
GREAT cast. Unlike some John Sayles films, this movie works as a “Stagecoach”-movie because the nine actors are so recognizable in their faces and portrayals (and because they’re all on the same journey together). Character-driven, suspenseful, full of heart and artistry.
For sensitive viewers: It’s a Western, so there are guns and characters get wounded or killed. PG.
Coming Up…
The theme for this summer month has been “vacation” movies, so each old film has been a Western. Next week will highlight what I consider the best Western. Pun intended.