The Miracle Club: Faith isn't quite enough

The Miracle Club (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for thematic elements and mild profanity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Although director Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s gentle little dramedy has its moments, the best efforts of a powerhouse cast can’t quite overcome the issues left unresolved in the original story by Joshua D. Maurer, Timothy Prager and Jimmy Smallhorne.

 

Lily (Maggie Smith, right), Eileen (Kathy Bates, center) and Dolly (Agnes O'Casey) —
with her young son, Daniel (Eric D. Smith) — are delighted to learn that they've won
a trip to Lourdes, in France.

The year is 1967, the setting the (fictitious) hardscrabble Dublin suburb of Ballygar. One gets a sense — enhanced by the authentic locale and John Hand’s superb production design — that life hasn’t changed much during the past century. Pleasures are simple: boisterous family gatherings, a talent show at the local church.

Work is hard, money is scarce, family responsibilities — even under the most loving circumstances — leave no time for anything else. 

 

Travel? A vacation? Idle fantasy.

 

Of late, though, the daily struggle has been augmented by fresh worries for a couple of close friends. Eileen (Kathy Bates) is terrified that a lump on her breast might be cancer. Lily (Maggie Smith) is succumbing to the crushing guilt that has plagued her for years (the details of which emerge slowly). Both mourn the recent death of another friend, Maureen.

 

Dolly (Agnes O’Casey), a generation younger — and the sole Ballygar resident determined to bring a bit of London mod to the community — despairs over her silent young son, Daniel (Eric D. Smith, wide-eyed and adorable). She fears that the boy’s muteness, or unwillingness to talk, is somehow her fault. 

 

All three women — Eileen, Lily and Dolly — dream of making a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where millions travel each year, to bathe in the sacred waters and receive God’s grace. And, perhaps, a miracle.

 

Thanks to some clever maneuvering by the kindly parish priest, Father Byrne (Mark O’Halloran, note-perfect), a small miracle does occur … and, suddenly, all three get their wish: an all-expenses-paid trip to Lourdes. 

 

This includes something else they never expected: a brief bit of freedom. And independence.

 

Alas, the jubilant mood is dampened — for Eileen and Lily — by the unexpected appearance of Maureen’s daughter, Chrissie (Laura Linney), who fled to America 40 years ago, beset by scandal (the usual kind, given the time period). Dolly is too young to have any emotional response to Chrissie’s arrival, but it opens old wounds and long-unspoken betrayals involving Eileen and Lily.

 

Worse yet, Chrissie insists on joining the trip to Lourdes.

Sing Street: A joyful noise

Sing Street (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic candor, profanity, underage smoking and other questionable teen behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.29.16

I’m in love.

Much the way the young star of this indie charmer worships the mysterious girl who lives across the street from his school, I adore the filmmaking chops of Irish writer/director John Carney.

Having worked up the courage to chat up the intriguing girl (Lucy Boynton) who often
stands across the street from his school, Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) concocts an
improbable scheme to get her attention. The problem, then, is making good on his
grandiose claims...

He came to our attention Stateside with 2007’s endearing Once, and its music-laden saga of a Dublin busker and Czech immigrant who meet and then bond over their shared love of songwriting and performing. Stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová fell in love during production, and it showed; nothing could have been sweeter than their Academy Awards performance of the film’s signature tune, “Falling Slowly,” which deservedly galloped home with an Oscar.

Carney detoured with a couple of less successful projects before returning to the music world with 2013’s equally appealing Begin Again, which found washed up, Manhattan-based music exec Mark Ruffalo embracing one last career shot by encouraging the efforts of fledgling singer/songwriter Keira Knightley. As with Once, the action unfolds against a backdrop of catchy, radio-ready new songs: another instant soundtrack hit for delighted fans.

Pleasant as it was, though, a certain something was missing from Begin Again: something that has become obvious with the arrival of Sing Street. As a writer, Carney clearly has the most fun exploring his Irish roots; this new film’s hard-scrabble, working-class Dublin setting affords a rich tapestry of young angst and earthy ensemble dynamics.

Carney sets his story in the 1980s, as a bleak employment depression sends ferryloads of young Irish citizens to London, in the (often vain) hope of landing a steady paycheck. Against this backdrop, 15-year-old Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) finds life at home increasingly distressing. Parents Robert (Aidan Gillen) and Penny (Maria Doyle Kennedy) are heading for a messy divorce, heedless of the impact the process is having on Conor, his sister Ann (Kelly Thornton) and their older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor).

Financial stress contributes to the trauma, and one immediate change affects Conor personally. To save money, he’s moved from his posh Jesuit private school to an inner-city comprehensive: Synge Street School, laden with cigarette-smoking bullies barely kept under control by mostly ineffectual priests. The one exception is the smugly authoritarian Brother Baxter (Don Wycherley), a tyrannical monster who takes pleasure in humiliating his students.

Barely into his first day, Conor runs afoul of both Brother Baxter and the hulking Barry (Ian Kenny), a vicious older student likely passed from one grade to the next, just so his previous instructors can get rid of him.