Ordinary Angels
Surface oriented and light weight, but with real humanity lurking with, Ordinary Angels takes the increasingly controversial stance that religious belief is all well and good but it’s ultimately up to human beings to look out for one another. Keeping its heart on its sleeve and any proselytizing close to the vest, Jon Gunn’s is more of a character sketch giving Swank a chance at adult drama without any real cost or difficulty. It’s also completely willing to use real suffering as stage dressing for light drama but if Angels tells us anything it’s that sometimes you’ve got to bulldoze through inconvenient obstacles to get to the promised land.
Lost for years to the highs and lows of alcoholism, when hairdresser Sharon (Swank) finally gets on the wagon she is left with an addictive personality in search of a new focus to glom onto. It practically walks into the room in the form of adorable children (Mitchell, Hughes) mourning their mother, helping their father (Ritchson) keep things together and caring for the youngest who has her own fatal disease which can only be cured with a full liver transplant. Struck by their plight Sharon immediately barges into Ed’s life – despite his request for privacy – bringing plans for raising funds and organizing his community to cover Ed’s crushing medical debt.
A little bit of Erin Brokovich, a little bit of Sister Mary Benedict, Sharon is a force of nature and a fine performance for Swank to sink her teeth into. Blissfully unaware, or apathetic to, how she affects those she comes into contact with, Sharon barges on intent only on her own goals and desires even when those are about helping someone else. She refuses to take no for an answer from the stoic, conservative Ed – leaving Ritchson to mostly act with one syllable words – or the various organizations she bullies into helping. The screenplay by Meg Tilly and Kelly Fremon Craig (last year’s excellent Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret) is focused squarely on her and they bring life to what could be just a vague outline.
It is somehow simultaneously delicate and obvious. Ed’s troubles are real and so is Sharon’s concern. Their plight is deserving of the measure of effort she goes to. Even if Ed can’t and won’t see it, his mother (Travis) does. It’s not an accident that Angels comes most alive when they take over, forcing everyone around them to do the right thing even though it’s difficult. It’s also not an accident that the rationale’s for not doing the right thing are primarily internal leaving them unsaid and thus and unexamined (because it would be difficult to justify externally).
As the problems deepen, and Ed’s patience with Sharon’s meddling ways hit the breaking point, the retreat to alcohol raises its head again exposing her to the demons she has tried to run away from. Not just her desire for escape but how her addictions drove her own son away and the realization that the children she is helping, as noble as it may be, are a replacement in lieu of acceptance of her own flaws and real change in her life. Swank is empathetic and charming, partly because that’s what Sharon is by design, it keeps people from seeing something wrong with her, and partly because everything hangs on her shoulders. She wears it well.
Ordinary Angels could be a hopelessly sentimental sop, easily brushed off as ‘Hallmark-lite’, but there really is more to it than that. It ignores easy spiritual answers (in favor of easy physical ones) to remind how precious real gifts are. Yes it has a religious core but that’s not what it’s about. It’s about people helping people and that’s something that can always use celebrating.