In a film full of great moments, it is difficult to choose one that
defines what In America is all about. Perhaps the most poignant is a
scene where eleven-year-old Christy Sullivan sings the Eagles’ song
“Desperado” at her school talent show. As she delivers her angelic
rendition of that classic tune, her father, Johnny, zooms his camcorder
in on her face during the closing verse: “Desperado, why don’t you come
to your senses? Come down from your fences; open the gate. It may be
rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you.
You better let somebody love you; let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late.”
Although
Johnny doesn’t realize it at the time, this is exactly what he needs to
do if he ever hopes to find peace: allow someone (namely, his family)
to love him. But before this can happen, he will have to let go of the
pain and grief over his son Frankie’s death. Unfortunately, that is
easier said than done.
Johnny isn’t the only one who needs to deal with his grief. The entire
Sullivan family—Frankie, his wife Sarah and their two daughters—has
been stuck in a state of denial for the past year. Seeking to escape
their anguish, they sneak across the Canada-US border and attempt to
build a new life for themselves in a run-down apartment in the Hell’s
Kitchen area of New York City. Struggling against poverty, limited
career opportunities (Johnny is an aspiring actor), and the stigma of
being “different,” the Sullivan’s try valiantly to squeeze the last few
drops of juice from the shriveled up lemons they’ve been given.
However, faking it can only get you so far. Sooner or later, they will
have to face up to the issues that have haunted them all the way from
Ireland to the Big Apple. For if they don’t, they risk becoming nothing
more than hollow shells, ghosts that merely haunt the earth for the
rest of their days.
The Sullivan’s unlikely ally in this struggle is Mateo; also known as
“the man who screams.” A struggling African-American artist, Mateo is
battling his own demons in the dark reaches of his apartment below.
Despite his hard exterior, the precocious Sullivan girls win him over
when they tell him about Frankie’s death. This begins Mateo’s
tumultuous incorporation into the Sullivan family, wherein he acts as a
catalyst to thaw out their frozen emotions. This experience also helps
Mateo overcome his own misery.
Despite these positive developments, death continues to plague the
Sullivan’s every step. Even when Sarah becomes pregnant with another
child, there is a risk that one or both of them won’t survive the
delivery. And then Mateo is hospitalized with advanced HIV/AIDS. One
gets the sense that the only way death will leave is if someone—namely
Johnny—finally turns around to face it. But can he? And if he does,
will anything really change? You’ll have to watch the movie to find
out. But I can tell you that seeing as the film is told from a child’s
perspective, there’s plenty of room for magic and miracles just when
you think all hope is lost.
In the end, we realize that Johnny’s journey is really our journey—or
perhaps the journey of all humankind. All of us are packing a world of
hurt on our shoulders, struggling like the mythological Atlas to find
some place where we can lay our burden to rest. However, having carried
it for so long, we are often loath to let it go. As painful as it may
be, we’re afraid of what life will be like without it. We’ve lost hope,
unable to believe things could ever again be as they were. Tragically,
this reluctance to embrace change is precisely what prevents us from
receiving the only thing that can offer a permanent solution to our
pain: love. Love from others and, ultimately, love from God. Thus, like
Johnny, if we ever hope to find that all-elusive peace, we also need to
come to our senses, come down from our fences and open the gate. We
need to let someone love us before it’s too late.