December 30: Middletown

This one was supposed to be published on December 28 but somehow got lost in the shuffle -- so better late than never.

As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, one of the frustrations of some of the film festivals I used to cover was that there might be several movies screening at the same time that I wanted to see. Middletown was featured at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival and while I kept seeing intriguing postcard advertisements for the film, I could never make any of the screenings. So when I saw that it was available from Blockbuster, I added it to my queue. Well, I recently got the film and watched it and all I can say is that maybe the spirits were trying to tell me something when I missed the film the first time around.


Middletown is an Irish film written by newcomer Daragh Carville and director by novice filmmaker Brian Kirk making his feature film debut. The director went on to helm episodes of the Showtime series The Tudors, Brotherhood, and Dexter and he enjoyed a bit of praise for the Daniel Radcliff vehicle My Boy Jack which aired over PBS stations.

The movie's plot owes a bit to the Biblical parable of the Prodigal Son. In this case, Gabriel Hunter (Matthew Macfadyen) returns to his hometown situated somewhere near the border in Northern Ireland. Gabriel was the chosen one who went off to study for the ministry and who has returned determined to clean up the town and right what he feels were the mistakes of the priest he is replacing.

That he returns to a place where his father Bill (Gerald McSorley) and his younger brother Jim (Daniel Mays) live is more than a coincidence. Of course, Gabriel doesn't seem to appreciate the sacrifices that these men have made that have allowed him to study and not work a day in his life. (In the opening scene, we seen a teenage Gabriel being told that he has been chosen by God to do God's work -- which should automatically set off warning bells.)

There's conflict between the brothers as well. Jim has always been seen as something of a muck-up and now that he's saddled with a pregnant wife Caroline (Eva Birthistle) who happens to be the daughter of the owner of the local saloon, he still can't seem to make things right. He and the wife live in a caravan on land next to a house that is being built -- but never seems to get anywhere near to completion thanks to Jim's inability to manage money. He'd rather gamble away the few dollars he has than pay the laborers to build a house for his wife and child.

Gabriel blazes into town like an avenging angel and sets about to "fix" things -- denouncing from the pulpit anyone who dares to cross him. First it's Caroline, then it's Jim. Unfortunately Gabriel only sees things in black and white and it soon becomes predictable what will occur. Well, I concocted a few possible scenarios and one of them was exactly how the movie unfolded.

I have to say that I understood what the screenwriter and the director were trying to get at -- the idea that fundamentalism -- or the embrace of any religion a bit too tightly -- can lead to a misreading and misinterpretation of the ideas that a religion espouses. Clearly, there's a very strong germ of an idea there. But in execution, Middletown falls fairly short. The setting is more or less modern day but there seems to be no police presence in the town -- not even a volunteer to enforce law and order. Instead, it is left up to the minister -- in this case Gabriel -- to serve as judge and jury -- and the fact that everyone in the town except Caroline and later Jim embrace his beliefs didn't ring true. I get that the filmmakers were trying for an analogous situation and all, but it just didn't work.

The performers do what they can with their roles, with Birthistle emerging as the most memorable perhaps because she's the only one to really show any gumption. Mays doesn't exactly handle the transition from whipping boy to man with spine very well -- but I think a lot of that is flawed writing. Macfadyen is even more lost, left trying to play an idea. Part of the problem is that the audience never gets a sense of who he was before he left the town or of what happened to him while he was away. He just returns and assumes this stance of vengeance. Since we know so little of him, we hardly care, despite the actor's best efforts.

Middletown ends in a conflagration that alters the lives of several of the key players -- but the audience is left wondering why we bothered. If it hadn't already been used by a much better writer, the title for this could have been Much Ado About Nothing.

Rating:      D