THIS CELTIC CROSS TOO MUCH TO BEAR
Wild Mountain Thyme is magically delicious, but for all the wrong reasons
I didn't hear of the furor that erupted across the pond when the trailer for Wild Mountain Thyme landed on the shores of the Emerald Isle last month. But mere seconds into the movie, I was feeling it myself.
Imagine, if you will, Christopher Walken. As an Irishman. “Welcome! Welcome to Ireland!” he chirps in the film's opening moments, right after a touristy montage of the prettiest green landscape you'll ever see, begorrah.
“My name's Tony Reilly. I'm dead. They say if an Irishman dies while he's telling a story, you can rest assured he'll be back. Once upon a time in Ireland …”
And on he goes in that voice of his. It doesn't sound Irish. Heck, it doesn't even sound like Queens, which is where he's from. It's a one-of-a-kind brogue from the country of Chriswalkenstan, population one.
Next up, Emily Blunt. Also not Irish, though the Londoner is better at faking it than Walken. She and Jamie Dornan (from Belfast! Hurrah!) play star-crossed lovers Rosemary and Anthony, in the latest from playwright and filmmaker John Patrick Shanley, whose last writing-directing work, 2008's Doubt, garnered five Oscar nominations. He also won an Academy Award for writing 1987's Moonstruck.
So we know he can write. And in this one, adapted from his 2014 Broadway play Outside
Mullingar, there are moments of linguistic genius. “Maybe the quiet round a thing is as important as the thing itself,” says Anthony, who clearly yearns for Rosemary but can't express his desires because — well, because he's always saying beautiful, cryptic things like that.
Or take this from Rosemary: “Hope is a force, and women are the salvation of the world.” And: “I'm half dyin' for livin' for you.” Lovely stuff, although when most of the non-irish speakers open their mouths it's like listening to a symphony for strings being played by on a glockenspiel and the bagpipes, both rusty.
Then there's the matter of the time period. For long stretches, given the rural setting and the simple ways of the farmers, you could almost imagine this is set in the 1940s or earlier. At the very least it seems to be going for “timeless.” But then Rosemary talks about freezing her eggs, or Anthony's cousin (Jon Hamm), arrives from New York on a modern jet, and you're wrenched back to the present, or at least the pre-pandemic almost-present.
Some critics have been swayed by the story of two people who
are clearly meant to be together but can't quite make it work. My take is that we've seen that cliché so many times that any new version has to bring more to the table than a couple of pretty faces and Ireland's mercurial weather.
Take Anthony — the screenplay suggests he might be a bit simple, but in Dornan's performance he just comes across as shy and awkward.
There's too much Pride & Prejudice in his diffident farmer character.
On the plus side, his is the biggest role with a bona fide Irish accent. Which brings us back to Walken, so woefully miscast. He was also on screens this year in Percy playing Percy Schmeiser, a Saskatchewan farmer who locked horns with the multinational Monsanto in the late 1990s. I guess this is his agrarian period as an actor. But perhaps it would suit him and fellow New Yorker Shanley to stay closer to home for a while.