Ironweed (1987)

Director:

Hector Babenco

Writers:

William Kennedy (novel)
William Kennedy (screenplay)

Release Date:

February 1988 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A schizophrenic drifter spends Halloween in his home town after returning there for the first time in decades.

Plot Keywords:

Albany New York | Cancer | Ghost | Singer | Drifter

Awards:

Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Jack Nicholson	...	Francis Phelan
Meryl Streep	...	Helen Archer
Carroll Baker	...	Annie Phelan
Michael O'Keefe	...	Billy Phelan
Diane Venora	...	Margaret 'Peg' Phelan
Fred Gwynne	...	Oscar Reo
Margaret Whitton	...	Katrina Dougherty
Tom Waits	...	Rudy
Jake Dengel	...	Pee Wee
Nathan Lane	...	Harold Allen
James Gammon	...	Reverend Chester
Will Zahrn	...	Rowdy Dick
Laura Esterman	...	Nora Lawlor
Joe Grifasi	...	Jack
Hy Anzell	...	Rosskam

Runtime:

143 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Australia:M | Argentina:13 | Canada:14A | Chile:14 | Finland:K-14 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Albany, New York, USA

Company:

Home Box Office (HBO)

Trivia:

In the trolley car scene, mounted members of the New York National Guard were played by members of the New York State Police Mounted Unit, since disbanded.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: When the vigilantes' cars approach the hobo camp, they are observed across the steel-ribbed top of a boxcar with no running board, impossible in 1938.

Quotes:

Helen: What if I did drink too much wine? Whose business is that anyway? Who knows how much I didn't drink, huh?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Time Chasers (#9.21)" (1997)

Not for the faint of heart

Have you ever wondered what's it's like to be homeless? To most of us, it's as foreign an existence as the medieval world of Hugh Capet. And yet, it's a way of life that's within reach of all of us. And I'm not talking about its physical proximity, about the unfortunates we pass on the streets with their bed rolls on their backs: on the contrary, I'm referring to its spiritual, psychological proximity, to all the rest of us, who, given the right circumstances, could give up on our cheery Western materialist society and wander off into the shadows.

Ironweed takes its viewers into that shadowy world of the rail yards, cardboard shantytowns, underpasses, and abandoned automobiles, and shows us incisive glimpses of how a person arrives there. Featuring what I think are the very best performances by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, Ironweed gets us deep into the sooty, grimy, bilious skin of the two `hobos.' Like Schindler's List, Ironweed is dark poetry. When the movie is over, you're haunted for days by the imagery.

Set in Albany during the Great Depression, Ironweed delivers not an ounce of moralizing. It's like a clinical exposition of the homeless person's entire life, both from without, and within. On the outside, of course, there's the Depression: a society doing the best it can to get by. From the `hobo's' point of view, one feels the implicit violence of a culture taught to view others as economic instruments of their own survival. The homeless, of course, are on the bottom end of the food chain. On the inside, Ironweed takes us into the intense pain of dashed hopes and expectations. From within and without, the homeless are caught in a whirling vortex that only grinds them down deeper and deeper into despair, the type that Kierkegaard's describes in `Sickness unto Death.' It's where intense poverty is not just physical, but spiritual.

This is a terrific movie; but, it's not for the faint of heart.