This is My Father
directed by Paul Quinn
starring Aidan Quinn, James Caan, Moya Farrelly, Jacob Tierney
cinematography by Declan Quinn
Actor Aidan Quinn and his equally talented but lesser known brothers Paul and Declan
have collaborated on the little gem of a film This is My Father. It's a small story,
co-produced by the Quinns and partly shot in Montreal, about a few incidents surrounding
a couple in an Irish village, and about the repercussions felt years later on their
Irish-American descendants.
James
Caan plays Kieran Johnson, a burnt out high school teacher in the States. We see
him shuffling through the classroom, prodding his listless students to complete an
assignment on tracing their family history. As he begins to realize how lame and
dulled he has become in his job and in his life, Kieran decides it's time to explore
the history of his own family, especially the mystery of his absent father Kieran
O'Day, and so takes a trip to Ireland to track down relatives and old neighbors.
His mother Fiona (Françoise Graton), recovering from a recent stroke and now
in the care of his sister, has always been reluctant to talk about the elder Kieran,
who disappeared before young Kieran was born. The sister urges Kieran Johnson to
take her son Jack (Montreal actor Jacob Tierney) with her, as much to give her a
break as for his experience of the journey.
In Ireland
Kieran and his nephew Jack encounter Mrs. Kearney (Moira Deady), a woman who knew
Fiona when she was young. From here, with attention and care the brothers Quinn unfold
the story, shifting back and forth between Kieran and Jack's conversations with the
old woman, and to life in 1940s Ireland and the days of Fiona and Kieran O'Day's
youth.
But the past we see is not simply lush rolling hills and the other quaint charms
of Ireland and the Irish. This is also a mean and backward country of narrow provincialism:
these people are the "unfortunate priest-ridden race" of Joyce, whose life
is tightly circumscribed by work, church, the gossip of neighbors, and proper appearances.
The priest bullies and glowers at the congregation, warning them not to dare miss
a sermon, else he will preach to them in the fields as they work. The slight gradations
in class and social status are exaggerated, too, in the tiny village, and Paul Quinn
- who also wrote the screenplay - brings us up close to the little grievances and
resentments that can fester in this bound-up society.
In the midst of all this is a love story, with older, shy farm boy Kieran O'Day (Aidan
Quinn) falling for the teenaged and irreverent Fiona Flynn (the young Fiona played
with astonishing vitality by Moya Farrelly). But it's a romance that crosses too
many boundaries in too stifling a time and place, and the lovers' happiness is imperiled
from the start.
To say more would give too much away. Suffice it to say it's a lovely piece of film
making, delicate and moving, about memory, and about the way the past speaks to us
and can change us.
- Neil Brouillet
This is My Father plays at the Loews Cinema,
954 Ste-Catherine W.,
tel: 514-861-7437