Ironweed (1987)

You won't be disappointed!

It is a performances centric movie

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I found this movie on DVD at my public library, I watched it at home. The Great Depression in the USA lasted from 1929 to 1939. This movie is set in 1938 Albany, New York, near the end of the Depression but with most communities in a depressed economic state.Jack Nicholson is Francis Phelan, a drifter who has been away from home for some years. He returns right at Halloween, he meekly looks up his wife and two young adult children, but he calmly states that he doesn't plan to stay.His friend with benefits for some years is Meryl Streep as Helen, former singer and entertainer who now was a shell of her former self. In a non-glamorous role Carroll Baker is Francis' faithful wife Annie Phelan, she is surprised when he shows up but treats him with compassion.This is just a slice of life story, bums and drifters doing what they can to sometimes find a little work, maybe get a sandwich here or visit the soup kitchen there, find an abandoned car to sleep in for the night without freezing. I didn't find the story itself very enjoyable, it is a tragic story, but I found it worthwhile for Nicholson and Streep.

I, like many others I assume, was drawn to this film by it's list of actors. With a cast like that it's gotta be great, right? As it turns out, not so much.The story here is simply not THAT interesting to warrant a run time of almost two and a half hours. A baseball player accidentally kills his child and then, in his grief, abandons his family and becomes a bum. Years later he goes back to see his wife and is welcomed home with (mostly) open arms. And things really don't develop much more than that. So A-listers, Jack Nicholson and Merrill Streep flounder around a gloomy set and try to act their way to an epic film, but they just don't have the material to work with. So you end up with a very drawn out, dreary, and unavoidably BORING movie. It's certainly not worth the time investment when there's no payoff.

Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by William Kennedy, "Ironweed" is a somewhat interesting film by director Hector Babenco. Starring Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep and Tom Waits, the film watches as a trio of homeless bums struggle to survive during the Great Depression.Whilst "Ironweed" contains a number of strong vignettes, particularly a last act sequence in which Nicholson's character attempts to reconnect to the family he abandoned, the film is mostly obvious, melodramatic and paints too narrow a view of the Depression. Elsewhere Nicholson and Streep mistake overacting for naturalism, Babenco's cinematography is washed out and the director demonstrates poor shot selection. The film gathers a series of convincing sets and impressive real locations, but Babenco can't shoot them effectively. Tom Waits stands outs as a dying drunk.7.5/10 – Worth one viewing.

I remember so clearly the night I first experienced "Ironweed". I'd spent a long, tired winter day working in the remote coastal community of Victoria Harbour, Nova Scotia. The wind was blowing hard all morning and into the afternoon, leaving snowdrifts strewn across the ever-narrowing roads. Down these quiet country byways, I was mesmerized by the old buildings and abandoned shacks. As I made my way down to the water, I came out at an oceanside clearing beneath menacing cliffs. It was with this frozen world in mind and at the end of a long journey home that I sat down with my dinner to watch "Ironweed".Although I'd just returned home from an early March day, this film takes place more around late November. The cold is palpable. You can see the actors' breath in many of the scenes, feel the ice in their veins. Hector Babenco holds back anything that might get in the way, and directs sparsely and quietly. You're certain to be familiar with the lead actors, but don't let that throw you. Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep have never been as pure before or since. It's as if they are these people. Francis and Helen are living, breathing humans, as real as characters as the very people who play them. Tom Waits, who is one of my favorite singer-songwriters, appears sporadically as Francis' drinking buddy. It's a great performance.Being homeless in 1938 was no small challenge I'm sure, and "Ironweed" captures every inch of pain, struggle, heart and humanity of its characters. The darkness is so all-encompassing that every hint of hope seems all the clearer. You feel encouraged to find whatever hints of light that you can. Which is why, in that final scene, as light streaks across the room while a woman's voice describes what you see, a future of hope seems all the more possible. The grey and brown tones of a seemingly endless series of cloudy days brings you down to those times when you start feeling that the sun will never shine again. "Ironweed" offers the most subtle, painful, beautiful reminder that it always will.