There is a bit of fun and nostalgia in watching Kieran's journey to Ireland in search of his heritage. At the same time, the story he hears is downright depressing. This is the first of the many contrasts in this tome: youthful and elderly, man and woman, rich and poor, pious and heartless, lively and dead. But when these contrasts become literary contradictions, we can't quite tell what this story is trying to say.
The frame narrative structure has been criticized as unnecessary, cheesy, and distracting. Although it may not be essential, it certainly highlights the contrast between young and old to see that Fiona, once a lively teenager, is now an infirm octogenarian. Age and other gaps are a constant in her life and her family's: she loves a poor thirty-year-old man, she and her well-to-do mother cannot come to terms over this fact, and in spite of the callous town priest she appears to retain and disseminate to her children a visible Catholic faith (large Crucifixes adorn the family's Chicago home).
For that last reason, I'm not sure I'd agree with those who accuse this movie of "anti-Catholicism" per se. Perhaps there is a bit of anti-clericism, or at the least, an indictment of the cold Jansenist moralism of the French-instructed Irish priesthood in contrast with the forgiving mission of Christianity--a perfectly legitimate complaint in the eyes of this practical Catholic. (Some have also suggested that the objection of the Church and Fiona's mother to the relationship was class prejudice masquerading behind religious puritanism.)
The problem is that a reasonable viewer may or may not be sympathetic to the plight of the two lead characters in relation to Widow Flynn and the clergy. This is partially because the script does not take full advantage of the castmembers' abilities: Kieran Sr. is a bit flat, as it is not quite clear what about him caught the eye of a beautiful, young, intelligent girl. And I do mean "young girl": I was hardly inclined to argue with the priest who, from the confessional, admonished: "You're a grown man and she's a child!" and ordered him not to see her again. Once the young/old contrast becomes a matter of outrage, we must choose a side, and it is difficult to take the side of a pedophile.
The ending, of course, was a terrible tragedy and an interesting metaphor for the grueling agricultural and social terrain of Ireland at the time. Beautiful though Ireland and Christianity may be, Kieran had weathered the harshest of the land and of the clergy and it destroyed him from within. But by that point the film had so nuanced its literary reading with realism that I was almost as inclined just to view his deliberate self-inflicted demise as stupid escapism. One leaves the movie wondering if it had anything philosophical to say at all, or if it was just one of the more depressing examples of the great Irish recreational storytelling tradition. The contrast is staggering.
The frame narrative structure has been criticized as unnecessary, cheesy, and distracting. Although it may not be essential, it certainly highlights the contrast between young and old to see that Fiona, once a lively teenager, is now an infirm octogenarian. Age and other gaps are a constant in her life and her family's: she loves a poor thirty-year-old man, she and her well-to-do mother cannot come to terms over this fact, and in spite of the callous town priest she appears to retain and disseminate to her children a visible Catholic faith (large Crucifixes adorn the family's Chicago home).
For that last reason, I'm not sure I'd agree with those who accuse this movie of "anti-Catholicism" per se. Perhaps there is a bit of anti-clericism, or at the least, an indictment of the cold Jansenist moralism of the French-instructed Irish priesthood in contrast with the forgiving mission of Christianity--a perfectly legitimate complaint in the eyes of this practical Catholic. (Some have also suggested that the objection of the Church and Fiona's mother to the relationship was class prejudice masquerading behind religious puritanism.)
The problem is that a reasonable viewer may or may not be sympathetic to the plight of the two lead characters in relation to Widow Flynn and the clergy. This is partially because the script does not take full advantage of the castmembers' abilities: Kieran Sr. is a bit flat, as it is not quite clear what about him caught the eye of a beautiful, young, intelligent girl. And I do mean "young girl": I was hardly inclined to argue with the priest who, from the confessional, admonished: "You're a grown man and she's a child!" and ordered him not to see her again. Once the young/old contrast becomes a matter of outrage, we must choose a side, and it is difficult to take the side of a pedophile.
The ending, of course, was a terrible tragedy and an interesting metaphor for the grueling agricultural and social terrain of Ireland at the time. Beautiful though Ireland and Christianity may be, Kieran had weathered the harshest of the land and of the clergy and it destroyed him from within. But by that point the film had so nuanced its literary reading with realism that I was almost as inclined just to view his deliberate self-inflicted demise as stupid escapism. One leaves the movie wondering if it had anything philosophical to say at all, or if it was just one of the more depressing examples of the great Irish recreational storytelling tradition. The contrast is staggering.