Religion in Irish Cinema

The negative impact of religion in Angela’s Ashes and The General

by Daniel Robbins
Presented to Prof. Mark Harris - 13 November 2009
FIST 332 - Studies in Genre or Period - UBC

During the last century, and beyond, Irish life has been in a state of turmoil. Alan Parker’s Angela’s Ashes (1999) and John Boorman’s The General (1998) both portray religion in a negative light, as the cause of problems rather than solution to them, but they do so in very different ways.

Angela’s Ashes is a film about growing up Irish Catholic. It is narrated by, and told from the perspective of, Frank McCourt. Since this story is told by a child, we see the world through the naïve, innocent eyes of someone that is not yet shaped and molded into a part of society. When his brother dies he does not “know why [they] can’t keep Oliver. [He doesn’t] know why they sent him away in a box like [his] sister” (Parker). In this way we get a bit more of an objective, albeit limited, view of Ireland. A child’s life consists of a few very important influences: his parents, his teachers, the people in his church, and his peers. Through Frank’s interactions with these influential people we discover how a person without preconceived notions of social interactions views society.

Frank’s parents impress upon him Catholic ideals. When Frank’s twin brothers die, after the death of his sister, Frank, his father Malachy Sr., and his brother Malachy pray together. Malachy Sr. leads the prayer saying, “I’m not supposed to question this am I?” (Parker). With this Frank’s father is teaching his son that Catholics do not question God and even when the worst things happen, you continue to obey. Malachy Sr. is hardly a steadfast role model; he is extremely problematic in his role as father. As Frank himself says there are three very different sides to his father. Malachy Sr. is a very troubled man suffering from alcoholism; Frank has trouble dealing with this and even has a drunken episode himself. His father is from the north of Ireland and is not accepted into the community of Limerick because, even though he is Catholic, the people assume he is Protestant. Frank’s mother, Angela, is a Catholic as well. Her family enforces religion on the whole family. To Angela’s mother there is “no excuse for that kind of ignorance” that the children bring about the religion from America (Parker). The presence of these people in young Frank’s life puts pressure on him to conform to the Catholic faith. His family teaches him to see life as a way of reaching the Lord.

Attending the Leamy School influences Frank in the ways of the Church. Teachers are just as influential in a child’s life as his parents. When these teachers are Catholic school teachers, there is an inevitable religious pressure on the students. In one lesson, the teacher teaches that it is “Latin that gains the entrance to Heaven itself” while distributing pieces of newspaper as the “body and blood of Christ” to the children’s’ tongues (Parker). In this way they are being taught in the ways of being Catholic before they are even old enough to participate in Communion. Instead of learning math, science, or literature, they are learning about Christ.

An even more obvious influence on a child in the ways of religion that a Catholic school, is the Church itself. The priests play a role in Frank’s life as well. We see it from giving his first confession to his guilty emotional breakdown at age 16 about Teresa, masturbation, and hitting his mother. These clerical figures teach him the ways of the bible and help Frank make decisions throughout his childhood.

His peers are possibly the only ones that do not force the Church on young Frank. It is with his fellow youngsters such as Mikey Malloy that he spends his money for traditional Irish dance lessons on the movies, “interferes with himself”, and steals apples and milk (Parker). These children show him the opposite of what everyone else teaches him. He would rather dance like the stars of Hollywood than in the ways of Irish tradition. If it were not for these troublemakers, Frank would not have had anyone that did not tell him to mind the bible.

This alternate reality that his peers present the Frank is most likely a good thing. Through its constant reference to Catholicism amidst Frank’s childhood, “Parker’s movie is anti-clerical” (Harrington 58). The defiance towards the Church that Frank learns eventually allows him to break free from Ireland and head back to America. Through the correlation between the presence of the Church and misfortune in the lives of the Irish, the film highlights the negativity of that presence.

The film begins with Frank McCourt saying in voice over, “Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood, is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood”(Parker). This quote, taken directly from Frank McCourt’s book on which the film is based, sets up for the rest of the film to show just why the worst miserable childhood is that of the Irish Catholic child.

Frank goes with his mother Angela as she goes to the St. Vincent de Paul Society to ask for clothes, furniture, and food. As we see Angela essentially begging, her and her son are standing below the St. Vincent de Paul Society backed by a “massive crucifix hanging on the wall” (Harrington 59). This kind of shot shows visually where the power is in Irish society. God is the almighty, the clergy is below but still high and mighty, and everyone else is on their knees begging for mercy. Parker’s use of images of angels and crosses throughout the film conveys this omnipresence of God in Limerick. We get the feeling that God is not overseeing, he is looming. As Angela is begging for furniture, they judge her on her “nice coat” and ask why her husband does not go to Belfast to ask for help since he’s from the north (Parker). These men that personify the fear of God, are brutally judgmental, and hold all of the power over the poor people of Ireland.

The threat of the Lord is not just seen in imagery. The teachers at the Leamy School are brutal, and unreasonable. “The masters at Leamy School all have straps and sticks… one master will hit you if you don’t know that Eamon DeValera was the greatest man that ever lived. Another will hit you if you don’t know that Michael Collins was the greatest man that ever lived” (Parker). These teachers use the hand of God to beat children even over different views of Irish historical figures. The teachers also, under the disguise of compassion, exert their own power and superiority over the student. In one scene, Malachy and Frank McCourt are too embarrassed to wear the shoes that their father fixed with a bike tire. They are this embarrassed because their classmates laugh at them. When this comes up in the classroom the teacher orders the kids to stop laughing because none of them are any better. He reminds them as well that you do not see Christ “hanging on the cross sporting shoes” (Parker). While this is going on we see close-up shots of the teacher’s own dress shoes. They are somewhat dusty, but wholly intact. This irony is a powerful statement to the power of the Church over the people of Ireland.

Angela’s Ashes sits at the extreme end of the spectrum. It shows Irish life at its worse: poverty-stricken slums during the depression. It is also set in a situation in which religion guides people through life. Closer to the more discreet end of the spectrum sits The General. Religion is much harder to see in everyday life, and people are much more well off.

The story of Martin Cahill set in the 1990’s in Dublin has many similarities to Angela’s Ashes. It is set in a family in an almost equivalent economic situation for the time. Religion prevalent in the society they live in as well. The way in which the characters relate to these things and the nature in which the things confront them is the difference.

Cahill becomes a criminal early on in his life to support his family. This gets him institutionalized as a young boy. Here he is almost molested by a priest. Martin reacts in a much more violent and defiant way than anyone in Angela’s Ashes, he punches the priest, who proceeds to beat him. We then see in very short, few shot, montage that he grows up in and out of institutions. From the start of the film we see how the Church negatively affects the people of Ireland.

Later, when he has his own ring of partners in crime he gets tipped that some of his men may be involved in drug trading. He suspects that one of his men has been stealing to feed a narcotics habit and in order to get information out of him he nails his hands to a snooker table. This is a clear allusion to Christ’s crucifixion. It is ironic in this sense because it is a criminal performing the crucifixion on another criminal. This could be a critique on the Church itself, and a judgment on what it stands for.

Toward the end of the film, his right hand man who wears a chain the whole film is put up for charges of molestation of his daughter. Cahill tells him “criminals don’t molest kids, leave that to the priests” (Boorman). When Cahill tells him to use his past being raped by priests as his defense in court, his response is, “I wouldn’t want to rat on him” (Boorman). The fact that this man would protect a priest that molested him instead of saving his own pedophilic hide is just downright ironic.

Boorman constantly uses stereotypes of the Church to undermine its authority, while underlining its negative presence in Irish life. Much like Angela’s Ashes, religion is found in all aspects of Irish life in The General. In both films this presence of the Church is quite opposite of the Bible’s intentions. It holds down the common people and elevates members of the clergy over poverty, and even the law.