Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt.
If an Irish man dies telling a story, he can be sure that he will come back. The Irish like to tell stories. Because Ireland is full of stories and History . A relatively small island in which the union with the land is something that escapes reason. that's about it an irish song, of the playwright and director John Patrick Shanley.
"I can't leave here because of them," says the character he plays Jamie Dornan. They are the green meadows "on which the animals are, we live from the animals and above us we have whatever exists" and keeps you glued to that fertile land and that sky that is either very blue or very black.
Patrick Shanley felt that ethereal call from the land of his the first time he visited Ireland with his father, who had emigrated years before. He, born in the Bronx, suddenly felt at home. And with that feeling he wrote the play Outside Mullingar, premiered on Broadway in 2014, and was nominated for a Tony.
Jamie Dornan and his donkey.
Six years later he has turned the play into a film which he has titled (in English) after a popular Irish folk song: Wild Mountain Thyme. Wild mountain thyme. But at the base of which the same story continues: two neighboring farms, two families that have been occupying those farms for generations, the last heirs do not want to leave it, they cannot live together but they cannot live separately either. Jamie Dornan and Emily Blunt they play these two young, proud farmers who didn't even need to know how many acres they have, they do, they know where they start and where they end and where they have to go to find their animals if they run away.
“We try to reflect what life is like on a family farm in Ireland” says the manager. It is a hard life: hands tanned in the field, with animals. To withstand a lot of rain, mud, cold. And suddenly the sun. "The whole movie is a celebration not only of Irish culture, also of Ireland itself and all its beauty”, says the actor Jon Hamm, that he plays a cousin born in the US and that he looks with some envy at the purity and pride of those who were born and have lived on the island. He though he also watches them suspiciously: "Why do you Irish make everything so complicated?" he wonders about his character and an Irish woman answers him. "It's an island, you don't want to draw attention to yourself."
Jon Hamm.
Thus, the film turns at times into a “How to flirt with an Irish person” . Doing a lot of detours, drinking a lot of Guinness and singing popular island songs. It seems the answer.
AN IRISH FAIRY TALE
An Irish Song was shot over five weeks at the County Mayo west of the Emerald Isle. The populations of Crossmolina and Ballina were the main settings of this romantic and rural tale.
John Patrick Shanley had imagined the story in the midlands, until he realized that this area had no hills. And he wanted hills. That tragedy of the earth that rises and falls. Those wild mountains where it is collected “the thyme that grows around the flowering heather”, what's the song say.
County Mayo, Ireland.
Mayo is the third largest county in Ireland. A very traditional corner in which Gaelic is still spoken It has natural history and human history. From the Atlantic Coastal Route with its impressive beaches to the Great Western Greenway , famous for its routes for bike rides. The cast of the film stayed at the estate Mount Falcon. And some of the recognizable locations are the thatch inn and the hiney's pub in Crossmolina.
I tried to reflect the beauty and majesty of Ireland” says the American director of Irish descent. "The story that I have written is a fairy tale, but a tale with roots firmly planted in one place." Ireland.
Christopher Walken.