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Dancing At Lughnasa

1998, Movie, PG, 92 mins

Dancing At Lughnasa: Review

DANCING AT LUGHNASA
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Painted in tiny, bitter brushstrokes that add up to a devastating picture of all-but-indomitable spirits under siege, this ensemble piece is driven by five powerhouse performances. Based on the 1991 Tony Award-winning play by Brian Friel, it's set in rural Ireland in 1936, where the sum total of a woman's life is measured in marriage and children, even though poverty has scattered the country's marriage-aged men to jobs in faraway America and Australia. The unmarried Mundy sisters live hardscrabble lives cloaked in prim respectability, just outside tiny Ballybeg. All except Christina (Catherine McCormack), the youngest and quiet shame of the family: She has an adored 8-year-old (Darrell Johnston) but no husband. Schoolteacher Kate (Meryl Streep) is the family's sole support; Agnes (Brid Brennan, reprising her stage role) and simple-minded Rose (Sophie Thompson, Emma's sister) knit gloves to supplement the family finances, though rumors of a knitting factory in nearby Donegal threaten their small contribution. All the sisters keep house and tend the yard, while Maggie (Kathy Burke), her sharp tongue tempered by cheerful wit, keeps peace between them. Disaster comes in the form of three men: Eldest brother Jack (Michael Gambon), a priest who returns from 25 years of missionary work far more changed by Africa than it was changed by him; Christina's feckless lover (Rhys Ifans), who, apparently for lack of anything better to do, is soon off to fight in the Spanish Civil War; and local layabout Danny Bradley (Lorcan Cranitch), who's romancing the impressionable Rose. Lughnasa, a Celtic harvest festival, symbolizes the pagan wildness beneath Ireland's placid surface, which bursts forth in the Mundy cottage in the form of a spirited traditional dance. But it's a rare moment of unfettered happiness in the sisters' slow, poignant journey into stinging despair. A heartbreaker. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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