Ironweed (1987)
Directed by: Hector
Babenco.
Written by: William
Kennedy based on his novel.
Starring: Jack Nicholson (Francis
Phelan), Meryl Streep (Helen), Carroll Baker (Annie Phelan), Michael O'Keefe (Billy),
Diane Venora (Peg), Fred Gwynne (Oscar Reo), Margaret Whitton (Katrina), Tom
Waits (Rudy), Jake Dengel (Pee Wee), Nathan Lane (Harold Allen), James Gammon (Reverend
Chester), Will Zahrn (Rowdy Dick), Laura Esterman (Nora), Joe Grifasi (Jack), Hy
Anzell (Rosskam), Bethel Leslie (Librarian), Richard Hamilton (Donovan), Black-Eyed
Susan (Clara), Priscilla Smith (Sandra), James Dukas (Finny), Ted Levine (Pocono
Pete), Martin Patterson (Foxy Phil Tooker), Terry O'Reilly (Aldo Campione), Frank
Whaley (Young Francis).
It’s a
little odd that a film that features Oscar nominated performances by Jack
Nicholson and Meryl Streep – the most nominated male and female actors in
history – has all but been forgotten in the years since it was released.
Perhaps it’s a little odder still, since the movie was based on a Pulitzer
Prize winning novel by William Kennedy, who also wrote the screenplay, and was
director Hector Babenco’s follow-up to his Oscar winning Kiss of the Spider
Woman (1985). And yet, Ironweed is not a film that is particularly easy to see
– I remember seeing an old VHS copy in a video store years ago, but for a long
time it didn’t make the transition to DVD or Blu-Ray or streaming – so it
remained the one Nicholson Oscar nominated performance I had not seen
(shamefully, I have few Streep nomination blind spots left). Watching the film
now, it’s a little easier to see why it’s been mostly forgotten – it’s not
because it’s bad, it’s actually quite good, but it isn’t great – and you get
the sense that it’s the difficulty of transferring a great, but interior, novel
to the screen that doesn’t quite translate. It’s also, it must be said, a
tremendous downer of a movie – it has none of Nicholson’s characteristic charm,
as he plays a character who has punished himself for two decades, by falling
down a hole of alcoholism and homelessness. It is a great performance. Streep’s
performance is great as well – although it’s really more of a supporting
performance than a lead, especially as the film moves along, and she almost
vanishes from the narrative. It’s one of the drawbacks of auteurism that often
times, fine films like Ironweed are overlooked as years go by – and a director
like Babenco, who was a very good director but never entered the pantheon of
the greats, has their films fall by the wayside. Ironweed is far from a perfect
film – but it’s a very good one, and deserves more attention than it’s gotten.
The film
takes place in the during the Great Depression, and focuses on Francis Phelan
(Nicholson), a man who has tormented himself for the last 22 years since he
dropped his two-week old baby, resulting in his death. Francis left the family
soon after, and has become an alcoholic drifter. In the film’s first shot, we
see Francis before we realize we do – he looks just like a pile of old rags in
a heap by a wall – and then the heap moves, and we realize it’s a man. The
first half of the movie is about Francis’ day-to-day life – taking on whatever
odd jobs he can find to pay for a bottle, and maybe a place to flop for the
night. His girlfriend, to use the term loosely, is Helen (Meryl Streep) – in
the same boat, for very different reasons. Streep doesn’t get the deep
backstory Nicholson does – but does amazing things with what she does have. The
master of accents does something interesting here – you know Helen comes from
the upper class by the way she speaks, but not what she says. Throughout the
course of the movie, you get glimpses of her past – she was a concert pianist,
but that has been derailed. She talks of her family with disdain – there is
perhaps some mental illness at play. She still has visions of her old life –
but in sad echoes – like her best scene, when she sings “He’s My Pal” to the
dive bar they are in, and imagines everyone cheering, when the sad reality is
that drunks barely seem to notice.
For
Francis, he is back in Albany, New York – perhaps for the first time in a
while. This is where his family is, and an early scene has him speaking to his
dead son’s grave for the first time, moved to tears. He will eventually return
to his home – to his wife Annie (Carroll Baker) and the two kids he abandoned. This
is a long sequence in the film’s back half, full of regret and things not said,
or half said. His wife never blamed him for what happened – his son wants him
home again. His daughter is bitter and angry – but she hasn’t lost the love for
him either.
But
Francis cannot go home. He is a haunted man – not just by his son, but some
others he has killed over the years in ways that he may not be entirely to
blame for – but are the type of situations most people don’t find themselves
in. I imagine scenes of the ghosts of these people following him around – and
him talking with them – worked better in the book then they do here – where
Babenco never quite figures out how to do it without making it look kind of
silly.
Ironweed
then is a story of a man who is so paralyzed by his past, that he cannot
function in the present, and has no future – and to a lesser extent, Helen’s
story is the same as Francis’ – just with a different set of memories to be
haunted by. It is a film about the type of people you don’t think about – the
homeless people you pass on the street, and don’t consider what led them to
where they are. Yes, it is a story of alcoholism – but not in kind of the big,
show-offy way of many movie drunks, told with exuberance. It’s about drinking
to make yourself get through one more day and not give up. Francis believes you
die when you’ve had enough – so clearly he isn’t there yet. He isn’t done
punishing himself.
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