![]() ![]() Except for a one-day trip to New York that’s easily the film’s most far-fetched moment, its world seems to end at the borders of these two farms. The movie might as well take place in a snow globe, with shamrocks in place of soap flakes. That movie painted Italian Americans as something more than stereotypes, and Shanley tried to do the same with the Irish in his play, although alterations made for the screen (like that horrible opening narration, stretched over a six-minute Tourism Ireland montage of emerald hills and ivy-covered churches, undoubtedly the result of test screenings and reshoots) lean in to our collective clichés about the island. Shanley, as we know, also wrote “Moonstruck,” a near perfect romance about imperfect people, which director Norman Jewison kept from inhaling too much of its own helium. ![]() “Wild Mountain Thyme” is the kind of film you want to love, just as you want these two characters to fall in love, and it’s simultaneously exasperating and original that they don’t go about their courtship in the usual fashion. Anthony looks at Rosemary as a brother might his sister, which is as far from romantic as the movie’s accents are from authentic. Their dynamic isn’t so much flirtatious as familiar. In any case, it’s been a quarter-century now that Rosemary’s been waiting for Anthony to work up the nerve to ask her out. Grudges aren’t easily forgiven in Ireland, although it’s hard to untangle what kind of emotions these two feel for one another, beyond the near certainty that they will resolve themselves with a kiss in the end. Shanley includes an amusing detail about a little piece of land at the end of the Reillys’ driveway that the Muldoons own, punishment for a childhood incident in which Anthony shoved Rosemary. That rivalry was tough on Rosemary at the time, though she was too “besotted” by Anthony to hold it against him. As Sigmund Freud said of the Irish, “This is one race of people for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever.”Ī right odd gossoon, Anthony’s not gay, and best we can tell, he’s only met one other girl besides Rosemary in his life - a forgettable lass named Fiona whom he fancied when they were kids. ![]() Rosemary adores him, whereas Anthony seems ambivalent, referring to “a tiny tininess in my brain,” whatever that means. And yet, Rosemary and Anthony are not a couple.Īdapting his own Tony-nominated play “Outside Mullingar” in the key of twee, director John Patrick Shanley has made a film that many will enjoy, but few will understand, and it’s not helped by a prologue in which young Anthony gazes up at the stars and asks, “Mother Nature, why did you make me so?” - a question the movie never deigns to explain. ![]() These two Irish neighbors grew up on adjacent farms, and the “once upon a time”-style opening narration - delivered by Anthony’s father, Tony, played by Christopher Walken - makes it all to evident in the opening minutes that these two are destined for one another. Anthony Reilly ( Jamie Dornan) is beautiful. Rosemary Muldoon ( Emily Blunt) is beautiful. Movies are constantly coming up with reasons to keep lovers apart for long enough to convince audiences that they genuinely belong together, but “ Wild Mountain Thyme” may be the first film in which those obstacles are never made clear. ![]()
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