Angela’s Ashes

• Cert:
• Cat.no: UDR 90070
• Running time: 140 minutes
• Year: 2000
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, PAL
• Chapters: 30 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English (feature only)
• Widescreen: 1.85:1
• 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
• Macrovision: Yes
• Disc Format: DVD 9
• Price: £19.99
• Extras : Alan Parker Commentary, Frank McCourt Commentary, “Making Of Angela’s Ashes ” Featurette, Cast and Crew Interviews, 2 Trailers

Director:

Alan Parker

Cast:

Angela McCourt: Emily Watson
Malachy McCourt Sr.: Robert Carlyle
Young Francis (Frank) McCourt: Joe Breen
Middle Franis (Frank) McCourt: Ciaran Owens
Older Francis (Frank) McCourt: Michael Legge
Grandma Sheehan: Ronnie Masterson
Aunt Aggie: Pauline McLynn
Uncle Pa Keating: Liam Carney
Uncle Pat: Eanna MacLiam
Narrator: Andrew Bennett

Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning memoirs of his formative years – begins in pre-war Brooklyn, with a struggling Irish family living in dreadful conditions. Before long, they are on a boat back home to the Emerald Isle, but it’s a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Truth, even after going through the Hollywood strainer, will always provide better drama than fiction, and a more credible balance between tragedy, fate and comedy. So it is with Angela’s Ashes. Desperate poverty and almost repulsively grim surroundings form the continual backdrop to McCourt’s childhood. Hygiene and health are but luxuries, as disease and ill-fortune shower down on their like as relentlessly as the incessant Limerick rains.

Yet through this terrible existence, of loss and lack of hope, the young Frankie somehow survives. That’s how the story came to be told all these years later, and frequently during the film’s stunningly-captured squalor you have to remind yourself that this actually happened, that it isn’t some dreamt-up Dickensian or Victorian nightmare.

An adult Frank provides a voice-over throughout the movie, but it’s quite posssibly the least intrusive one in recent memory, never interfering with the pace or potency of what unfolds. It also serves to best convey his engaging wit and the deeply confused outlook that plagued him during his upbringing among the pish-poor Catholic community in the slums of 1930s Limerick.

Alan Parker has assembled a largely unknown cast headed by two of the finest talents in British cinema, Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. Both give stellar performances, full of emotion and palpable sadness while also emitting the passion and subtleties that create real human beings and not spurious stereotypes.

Robert Carlyle himself remarked that there could have easily been a temptation to make his character – Frank’s wayward, alcoholic father – some sort of bad-guy rather than the flawed and compilcated man McCourt Junior clearly saw him as, a man who despite himself could not face up to his responsibilities.

Emily Watson continues the often startling work she has previously put her name to, with a comparitively restrained but nonetheless effective portrayal of a fiercely intelligent woman as well as a loyal wife and parent – “when I first saw her, I thought ‘that’s my own mother!’ “, revealed McCourt in “The Making Of Angela’s Ashes” documentary featured on the DVD.

The timescale of the film requires three different “Franks” to play McCourt at the ages of 5, 13 and 19. Though the youngest incarnation tends to leave the most indelible impression upon the viewer, all three do a grand job. It’s a moot point as to whether the stocky, chubby-faced pre-teen actor would grow up into a slender and handsome adolescent, since this is a film and finding the perfect actors in all respects is nigh on impossible, but the first changeover can be slightly distracting for a while.

Angela’s Ashes survives the transition from printed page to sliver screen courtesy of a beauitfully sensitive and perfectly-pitched adaptation from director Alan Parker. No rose-tinted trips down memory lane here – just assured and deeply evocative film-making of the highest order.

In Parker’s own words, McCourt’s book was “the Bible to us”, source material to inspire and fuse the often harrowing narrative. The writer’s first-person perspective, his poignant yet wryly humourous tone, has been deftly interpreted and translated for the screenplay.

This DVD presentation bears all the hallmarks of day & date Universal titles, with an impressive array of extra features that complement the main film and enhance the overall experience.

A 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary is slick but revealing nevertheless, McCourt’s involvement (and blessing of the film) giving an extra perspective. The interview footage is a cut above the usual collection of bland, bite-sized snippets, and captures the essence of Angela’s Ashes appeal and quality.

Two full-length audio commentaries are also included. For McCourt, it must have been surreal to provide a running commentary on the film version of an autobiography detailing his youth. With Parker, meanwhile, you always get candour and insight.

Angela’s Ashes is a remarkable film for many reasons, several of them directly connected to McCourt’s vivid and touching original prose that still acts as the beating heart of this movie. It avoids patronising romanticism or phoney *Oirish-ness*, instead delving into the author’s bittersweet recollections and emerging with dignity and integrity firmly intact. Better still, this DVD does the project justice.

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