Product: Ryan's Daughter (Two-Disc Special Edition) (2006)
Rating: 4.0
An Exercise In Visual Abundance At The Cost Of Depth
Often regarded as the masterful David Lean's "least great" film, this story of rural southwestern Ireland during the First World War is still an extremely beautiful exercise in film making. One of only two films in the last third of the twentieth century to be shot in 65 mm, a sort of cinematic precursor of today's high definition, Lean was on record in later years as saying this was the film he was both proudest of and also most frustrated by.Concentrating more on its stark but lush physical setting than its characters (sometimes focusing on setting to the detriment of its characters) Ryan's Daughter is a story about one Rosy Ryan, the pampered, pretty young daughter of a famous town publican, Tom Ryan, who marries a kindly but much older schoolmaster, Charles Shaughnessy, and soon comes to regret that she has. Bored with her limited wedded life, spoiled, always wishing for things she cannot have, the pretentious Rosy becomes infatuated with a melancholy young British military officer who has been sent to her desolate corner of Ireland after returning home from France wounded in the leg. The townspeople in the area are an aggressively closed-minded and xenophobic lot, virulently anti-British and pro-Republican, and Rosy, fool though she sometimes seems, is aware of what her fate would be should her involvement with the tragic-natured Englishman be revealed. What Rosy is unaware of is that her celebrated father, the town's leading man, is also a double agent who feeds information on Republican activities back to the British. A risky practice to say the least.Through it all the little town is kept under control by Father Collins, a stern presence in the community, feared, respected, deferred to by old and young. The phlegmatic Collins tries to direct Ryan's wayward daughter to be sensible in her life, but Rosy seems impelled toward behavior that can only bring ruin onto herself and those connected to her. Her recklessness makes Rosy far less a sympathetic person than an annoying one. She clearly and repeatedly places herself above others and accepts others' hardships as a small price for her own comfort. Her moment of possible redemption late in the film opens the door to hope for her, but the impression is that this is but a brief aberration in a deep-set egotism that is probably unshakable.This movie is famous for its scene filmed on a beach during an actual raging Atlantic gale, and even from the comfort of home to see multi-story waves break over and over amid furious winds makes you appreciate the commitment that went into making Ryan's Daughter what it was. All in all, however, Ryan's Daughter is not a great film. There is a paucity to its plot that deters its inclusion among the upper ranks of Lean's greatest works, and deep down the characters here breed their own destructions in ways that makes one feel their fates were warranted. The beauty of Ryan's Daughter is strictly visual rather than contemplative, and the truly best films of all time are those that brim with both.Four stars, but well worth seeing.