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Reviews
Patrick's Day (2014)
Patrick's Day, A Film That Is Really A Fairytale.
Sheer gorgeousness. The rich color scheme, the enchanting atmosphere, the dreamlike meeting, as well as the perfectly chosen Damien Dempsey soundtrack all move together rhythmically to make Patrick's Day the Irish Fairytale that it is. And like all tales, our characters must endure the initial turbulent journey in order to reach this elusive land we all know as the "happy ending". In Patrick, Maura, the detective and Karen's case, this journey is a struggle through dead notions of normalcy to reach a state of acceptance and peace, of community.
The dreamlike field where Karen takes him on their first real date outside her dim lit, dread-filled room. The field called possibility. Through Karen's influence, Patrick sees a plane for the first time. A plane that really represents all that could be. All that awaits him outside the little world his mother has built for them both out of her own fears of the world, her own mistrust of people. A mistrust that turns both her and her son into prisoners.
In the end, it is Patrick who then brings all of these strangers back to this field called hope: this sublime space that seems to exist somewhere in between reality and dreams, just as the dark corners of McMahon's Charlie Casanova existed somewhere between reality and nightmare. Through their trying to understand him, through their acceptance of him, they become more open-minded themselves. They free themselves from the shackles of old ideas. All of these details are why I would argue that the film is fundamentally a fairytale, a fairytale about the redemption of humanity through the cultivation of community.