‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ feels fine
Wild Mountain Thyme Rated: PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive comments. Running time: 105 minutes. Available to stream through video on demand starting Friday, Dec. 11. 666 out of 4
John Patrick Shanley, the playwright who wrote “Doubt,” has written and directed a new movie, “Wild Mountain Thyme,” set in Ireland and based on his Broadway play, “Outside Mullingar.” The film has minor flaws and distinct virtues, but the major thing to take from it is its spirit.
Somehow, through a succession of OK and pretty good scenes, it achieves a feeling of magic about it, so that by the end we realize that, without knowing it, we’ve been guided in a particular direction and toward a certain feeling. That feeling is specific and hard to describe, but has something to do with love, time and acceptance.
This makes “Wild Mountain Thyme” a kind of cousin to “Moonstruck,” for which Shanley wrote the screenplay. As in “Moonstruck,” Shanley does more than simply convey, through disparate scenes and various characters, the sense of a community. Rather, he suggests grand, overarching currents running through all their lives, currents that they can’t even see and maybe only vaguely feel. Not every writer can do this: Shanley is in touch with the heart of things, and he’s able to express it, almost as a matter of course, without making a fuss of it.
But “Wild Mountain Thyme” is different from “Moonstruck” in two ways. One, the obvious, is that it’s about Irish people, not ItalianAmericans. And two — the crucial difference — is that it’s decidedly the statement of an old man, or at least an older man. (Shanley is 70.) “Moonstruck” has the exuberance of possibility, while “Wild Mountain Thyme” is suffused by the sweetness and sadness that comes of looking within and knowing that they’ve installed the clock.
The movie contains one peculiar note, which is worth knowing about going in, so you won’t be confused. Jamie Dornan plays someone who could be described as the town oddball. You might not realize this at first, because Dornan doesn’t seem anything like an oddball. Yes, it’s there in the script, and he plays the role well, but there’s something in Dornan’s essence that reads more “cool guy” than “weird guy.” So as you sit down to watch “Wild Mountain Thyme,” just accept that what you’re supposed to be seeing in Dornan is a highly-romanticized vision of strange.
He plays Anthony, who
lives on the family farm with his rapidly aging father (Christopher Walken), who is thinking very seriously of bequeathing the farm to someone else — the idea being that Anthony is a little too daft to carry on the family legacy. Death, as a subject, in the air especially now, because the patriarch of the adjoining farm has just died. So, the movie begins with the older generation close to vacating the scene, but with the younger generation still unsettled.
Emily Blunt plays the daughter of the neighboring
farm, Rosemary, who is slightly eccentric and an obvious match for Anthony. He wants to marry her, and she wants to marry him, so it’s rather amazing that Shanley is able to create some uncertainty about the situation for most of the movie’s running time. Moreover, he is able to do this without resorting to the cheap and familiar device of having them get into some false argument. They maintain an easy rapport. He’s just shy, and she seems to understand that it’s crucial, in terms of any future they might have, they he get over it just enough to make some kind of first move.
The movie benefits from the lovely vistas of the Irish countryside and its idealized vision of farm life, which doesn’t seem to involve actual work. Incidentally, Irish viewers have complained that the Irish accents here are way off the mark, as inauthentic and ridiculous as the New York accents in “Moonstruck.” Oddly enough, they’re even complaining about Dornan, who is actually Irish, but from Northern Ireland.
In any case, the gentle spirit of “Wild Mountain Thyme” envelops us early, to the extent that, midway though, even though there is very little left to resolve, we are in its spell. It’s a light spell. It can be broken. (Watch it from beginning to end. Don’t get up for a sandwich. Don’t watch half tonight and the other half tomorrow. Don’t start it when you’re already falling asleep.) But light or not, it’s a spell, nonetheless, and it will leave you with a warm feeling.