In America: Irish Immigrants in Big Bad New York City

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A family arrives at a border crossing from Canada. “We’re on holiday,” the dad tells the daughters, while the border agent looks around the back seat of the overstuffed station wagon.  After a bit of tenseness when the older daughter remains stoic and silent, it’s ‘welcome to America,’ and we watch as they cross into the outskirts of Manhattan.  It is 1983, and this family of immigrants has just permanently moved to the USA from Ireland.

The movie we watched last night, In America, tells this story and introduces us to the crazed neighbors who dwell in the lower east side, the only place the family can afford to rent an apartment. Climbing the ten sets of stairs, the pass by an apartment with a gigantic ‘KEEP OUT’ emblazoned on the doorway. Down in the hallway, the cries of crack addicts and the moans from lunatics emanates up to the tiny ears of the two young girls and their middle class mom and dad.

Dad’s an actor–or he wants to be. So he trucks from audition to audition hoping to get a break. Downstairs, in the ‘keep out apartment’ an enormous tall muscled African American at first makes us all afraid of him. He’s clearly not well, he thrashes and bangs and  expresses a primal rage.  Yet we can tell there’s more to this big man, named Mateo.  He becomes intrigued with the young family, even as his own health takes a decline. At one point Mateo collapses on the landing, and the young girl tries to administer CPR. Thumping on his chest, she revives him, but later we all wonder about that mouth to mouth contact.  Nobody knows what’s wrong with Mateo.  The family becomes close to him, sharing playground trips and he revels in all of the life he sees, contrasted with his own imminent death.

The family grieves in unison over a son, Frankie, who died from a mysterious accident in Ireland.  During a thunderstorm, mom sends the kids for ice cream and makes passionate love to Johnny, we learn that here a new baby was conceived. But there would be problems; and huge expenses, because all is not right inside Mom’s uterus.

As the giant bill mounts for weeks in intensive care, nobody knows how it will be paid…and at last we learn that Mateo has already paid it, and mom and baby are free to go. The baby is tiny but survives, bringing life to fill the big space left by beloved Mateo.