Filmmakers create acclaimed dramas focusing on immigrant experience
Two filmmakers – Jim Sheridan and Vadim Perelman – are currently represented on screen by critically acclaimed dramas – “In America” and “House of Sand and Fog,” respectively – that involve the immigrant experience. Here’s a look at both directors.
Jim Sheridan
For Sheridan, “In America” ranks as a family affair.
The 54-year-old Irish artist directed the film and co-wrote it with his two daughters, Naomi and Kirsten, based on their experiences arriving in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York decades ago. During the PG-13 film, Sheridan shows the schizophrenia of the city, which he presents as both heaven on earth and a living hell.
“Some things in America are tough,” Sheridan said during a recent Philadelphia publicity stop to promote “In America,” now in theaters. “There’s a certain chaos if you come down on the bad side of things, like if you need medicine (and don’t have health care).
“America can be cruel, but it’s always honest, and Americans go for people’s aspirations.”
In the film, a father (Paddy Considine of “24 Hour Party People”) brings his wife (Samantha Morton of “Minority Report”) and two daughters (real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger, 11 and 7, respectively) from Ireland to New York so he can pursue work as an actor. The family quickly falls under the spell of the city, embraces the different cultures and becomes attached to a mysterious artist (Djimon Hounsou of “Gladiator”) living in their building.
Sheridan believes that exposing his children to people of different backgrounds and cultures was an important part of their emotional growth.
“I always felt where we lived in New York was safe enough with the junkies and transvestites, but what is really dangerous is denial,” Sheridan said. “Johnny (the film’s main character) has to face the idea that you can’t protect your family from loss and uncertainty, certainly not by hiding.
“But you can love them, and love itself (is) a kind of protection.”
Sheridan, who remains “a citizen of Ireland,” created a sensation in 1989 when he directed “My Left Foot,” which was based on the life of Irish writer/painter Christy Brown, who suffered from severe cerebral palsy, and earned Daniel Day-Lewis an Oscar as best actor.
He then directed “The Field” (1990) with the late Richard Harris before teaming with Day-Lewis on the powerful drama “In the Name of the Father,” which recounts the legal struggle of Gerry Conlon, an Irish man wrongly imprisoned for an IRA bombing. Sheridan worked with Day-Lewis for a third time on “The Boxer” (1997), a gritty love story set in Northern Ireland, and then devoted five years to “In America,” his most personal project.
Sheridan laughed when thinking back on the long road he’s traveled from his early days in Manhattan to his current place as an in-demand filmmaker and recalled a time when he very briefly considered giving up his aspirations to become a cinematic artist.
“At one point, I was washing toilets in a music institute and looked at myself in a mirror,” recalled Sheridan, who will next direct an untitled tale about the dichotomy in the United States between those who have money and the less fortunate. “I lsaw myself and said, ‘What am I doing here?’ Then I stopped and thought, ‘I must be doing something right, because I am here in America.’
“It’s like Frank Sinatra said: ‘If you can make it here (New York), you can make it anywhere.'”
Vadim Perelman
Like Sheridan, Perelman arrived here from a faraway place.
Born in 1963 in Kiev (then part of the former Soviet Union), the filmmaker was an only child whose father died when he was 9. At age 14, he and his mother left their native land and arrived in Europe as refugees.
While living in Vienna and Rome, his mother studied English while Perelman survived as a “street kid” who spent hours getting money to pay for food for him and his mother and would often sleep on a park bench or in a train station.
His life changed when an aunt helped the mother and son get a visa to live in Canada. He majored in physics and math at the University of Alberta, but his professional ambitions changed in 1984 during his sophomore year.
“I took a film appreciation course, and the first film they showed was on the making of ‘Fiddler on the Roof,'” recalled Perelman, who lives in Los Angeles, with his wife, Joanna, and 4-year-old son, Jacob. “As I watched it, I saw (director) Norman Jewison sitting in a little trailer and creating this world on film. I loved the fact that he was a creator, and that may result from me feeling powerless all of my life. When I saw someone controlling fate, that attracted me.
“The funny thing is that I didn’t even like to watch films until I was in my mid-20s. I found books to be a much richer medium.”
Perelman, who recently received the best directorial debut award for the film from the National Board of Review, was deeply interested in “House of Sand and Fog,” an intense R-rated drama opening Dec. 26. Based on the book by Andre Dubus III, the story concerns a young divorcee, Kathy Nicolo (Jennifer Connelly of “A Beautiful Mind”), who wrongly loses her house during a tax sale and then must appeal to the buyer, Massoud Amir Behrani (Ben Kingsley of “Gandhi”), to buy it back. The former Iranian military officer, who has brought his wife and teenage son to America, refuses to relinquish the property and instead intends to quickly sell it at a very large profit.
A war of wills develops between Nicolo and Behrani, one that ends in unexpected tragedy.
“The book moved me emotionally, perhaps because it echoed much of what happened in my life,” said Perelman, who’s currently preparing to direct “The Talisman,” a horror thriller based on the novel co-written by Stephen King and Peter Straub. “I understood what it was like for the refugee family and I was touched by the material.”