I am a long time admirer of Beverly D’Angelo’s beauty & talent. The film version of Hair is in my Top Ten Films of all time & she really shines in that movie. Remember her Oscar nominated turn as Patsy Cline in Coalminer’s Daughter? But my favorite performance by Ms D’Angelo is from the little seen & vastly under appreciated Neil Jordan 1991 film-The Miracle. This film is dreamy & expressionistic & although I only saw it once, I have never been able to shake it.
The Miracle is an unsung yet crucial point in Neil Jordan’s film career, a departure because it takes place entirely in Dublin. Perhaps it was a return home that prompted him to create a film about Ireland itself, & more specifically, the Irish family unit.
The film begins at the start of summer, a season with expectations, & the promise of excitement following the school year. Jimmy & Rose, childhood friends, spend hours daydreaming & making up stories for the people that surround them. No one is safe from their attempts to make sense of their world as they invent fantasies to interpret the mundane happenings of their seaside Dublin suburb. Each person they encounter is fodder for their notebook, a kind of sketchpad they use to develop the people around them into characters for their writing. Despite their dreaming, the young pair are still defined by their circumstances & they never contemplate escape or running away from home. Instead, they make the world around them conform to their vision of how it should be, creating their own chance encounters, happy endings, & ridiculous plot twists. This summer, however, they begin to lose control over their imaginations, and the stories they create seem to take on a life of their own. Beverly D’ Angelo plays an American actress who returns, after a long absence, to Dublin to appear in a local stage production of Destry Rides Again. The young people are drawn to her & she has secrets & mysteries to offer.
Neil Jordan’s films: The Crying Game, In Dreams, Breakfast On Pluto, Interview With The Vampire, always surprise in their ability to communicate their complex realities, whether stylized genres or stark realism, & often a combination of both. In The Miracle, the clash between the fantastic & the everyday occurs when we do not fit our ideal types. By the end, almost everyone has removed their mask, only to slip back into their accepted roles once more.
Check out this version of Stardust with just D’ Angelo & bass:
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