Ironweed, the film, is based on the 1983 novel of the same name by William Kennedy. It received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Kennedy wrote the screenplay for the 1987 film version directed by Hector Babenco and starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Major portions of the film were shot on location in Albany. The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Leading Role (for Nicholson) and Best Actress in a Leading Role (for Streep).
It is set in 1938, a year after I was born, in the New York State capitol, Albany, in the midst of the Great Depression. The main character in the story is Francis Phelan, a "bum" who nowadays would be known as a homeless alcoholic.
Phelan has been away from Albany for many years and returns on the eve of Halloween to his native town and finds his lover and drinking companion, Helen Archer.
She was once a talented singer on the radio; he was a major league pitcher.
Halloween night, Helen sings at a bar where both are getting drunk. In Francis' hallucinated vision, her singing is magnificent and after tremendous applause, he tells her that she was born to be a star. The reality is that her singing is awful and hardly anyone has listened.
Francis is haunted by the people he has killed, both accidently and on purpose. Some of these dead continually appear to him in hallucinations. He is also haunted by the memory of his 13 day old son whom he accidentally dropped in a drunken stupor and killed. At that point in his life he had left his family had become a bum.
On Halloween day, Francis goes to see his wife and children. His wife is happy to see him despite his past sins, and tells him that he can stay. Francis knows that the time for him to be a happy family man has passed. His wife and children wind up forgiving him for the death of the child and for his abandonment of them. But Francis
cannot forgive himself, and he cannot return to be the man he was before his descent into alcoholism and his lifestyle of vagrancy and dereliction.
Helen finds a hotel room and pays for two days, setting up all of her worldy possessions there as though it were her permanent home. While Francis is away,due to her unhealthy lifestyle, her health begins to fail. Francis' closest friend is also killed that day by a group of local vigilantes with baseball bats who raid the bums'
hangout to drive them out of town.
The film sweetly depicts the love and loyalty which the bums show each other even in their darkest moments.
Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep have perhaps their finest film moments here. Tom Waits, known to me as a song writer and performer, delivers a believable performance
as Francis' best friend, Rudy Newton. It was wonderful to see Carroll Baker again after so many years after she retired as a film actress.
At IMDB. dbdumonteil, in his review, THEY'RE MY PALS [21 June 2002] wrote
"Never the timing for a movie had been so disastrous. Released in those "glorious " eighties when the success stories and the triumphalist heroes were the golden rule,"Ironweed" stood no chance at all.Two tramps did not fit well in the movie landscape of those "feel good" times. And two tramps played by two megastars ,it was unforgivable!"
I totally disagree. When is it ever bad timing to see an emotionally engaging movie, filmed in a beautifully haunting way, and with such a tremendous cast? Ironweed
is not generally shown on TV these days. I was lucky to have captured it on my TIVO. This is the second time that I have seen it and I was as rapt the second time as the first. I am a tried and true fan of Meryl Streep who never disappoints an audience. Her role as a drunken hasbeen was challenging and she rose to the occaision as usual.
