At The Movies with James Phelan: The Three Urns
Olga Kurylenko in The Three Urns
You can’t make a road movie in Ireland. That’s a popular assumption in the industry here. Too small a country. No matter how twisty the route, you will quickly run out of road. The canny decision of this kind-hearted movie is to have its main character travel at ever-decreasing velocity on a variety of transport not traditionally associated with speed.
So the rather formally named Mr O'Connor (Ciaran Hinds) devolves from car to milk float to horse and trap in a comically sluggish odyssey across Donegal with his recently departed wife’s ashes in tow. He is ostensibly a man on a mission. A ticking clock deadline is inserted to apparently keep the show on the road but Mr O'Connor is repeatedly and warmly open to all sorts of detours and distractions.
On his trail, for deliberately withheld reasons, is a beautiful French woman (Olga Kurylenko) who is prompted on by recurring phone calls from a gruff superior to find the oddly elusive Mister O'Connor. Seemingly for the sake of the film making it to feature length, she proves incredibly good at tracking where the urn-bearing wanderer has been but incredibly poor at actually catching up with him. It takes heaps of contrivances to keep the snail-paced chase alive and the film offers no real logic to underpin the often ponderous pursuit.
Quite simply, Olga’s character has an uncanny, almost supernatural, knack for turning into every precise location that the travelling mourner graced before her. From venturing down random boreens, to finding the same scrapyard that aided her target, she has the instincts of a bloodhound. In fact, an actual bloodhound being present would have made more sense.
But I have to concede this is savvy low-budget film making too. Each location gets milked for two separate scenes featuring the obliviously pursued and then his lagging tracker. Clearly, I’m taking this all far too seriously. As a bright piece of total whimsy, ‘The Three Urns’ clearly wants us to park the critical part of our brains and just enjoy the leisurely ride. Because what we really have here is a travelogue that would make the tourist board proud and, in fairness, it fulfils that remit brilliantly.
Seemingly blessed with a sun-kissed shoot, the filmmakers capture the Donegal countryside in a glorious manner that really shines onscreen. It’s not damning them with faint praise but far bigger visiting international productions haven’t attained the stunning vistas seen here.
So much for the backdrop. At the forefront of the film is Hinds. And if you ever wanted a travel companion, he proves to be excellent company. Exuding a ruffled elan and easy charisma, Hinds is the sensible centre about which layers of eccentricity swirl. Though imbued with humour, he takes everything and everyone he encounters seriously. So, we the audience are more inclined to take the resultant film seriously too.
It’s just as well because some of the attempts at comedy are dead on arrival. There’s a supremely odd massage scene that might have been omitted entirely. And can we forgive a production featuring a milk float so centrally without including one ‘Father Ted’ reference?
Elsewhere, the film is rather guilty of portraying a country where there is music on every corner, a song on everyone’s lips and instruments grow on trees. Frankly, full songs being included felt perilously close to filler at some stages.
Still, the film is smart enough to balance out the prevailing old-fashioned feel with the inclusion of hip-hop, solar panels and electric cars. As if to re-assure us that, yes, this is today.
All in all, they don’t make them like this anymore. It’s a film that is so relentlessly gentle that some may find it offensive. It undeniably does possess an ambling, rambling charm.
It’s a film so light that it would be very easy to tear it apart but I’d rather see this film soar for its core audience. If you have a friend, partner or parent who feels that modern cinema has lost them with all its empty bombast and sensory assault, this movie might just be the balm that we didn’t know we needed.
