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Feb 09, 2016 By Julia Bembenek Web Exclusive

Gerard Barrett’s Glassland opens in a dingy apartment with a sink full of dishes, and always remains upfront about what a classic example of kitchen-sink drama it is. The narrative centers on young cab driver John (Jack Raynor) as he labors to bring his mother (Toni Collette) out of the deepest depths of alcoholism before she has the chance to drink herself to death. If he’s not driving long hours in his cab, crisscrossing the streets of Dublin with passengers from all walks of life, he’s either frantically making sure his mother is home and safe from her latest bender, or hanging out with his closest and only friend, Shane (Will Poulter). These interludes, where the two young men hit the arcade or play video games at Shane’s house, where his mother brings them tea and biscuits and fawns lovingly over her son. It’s a stark contrast to John’s dynamic with his mother, and he recognizes it silently. These twinges of envy are a small price to pay for these fleeting moments where John is allowed to act his age—or even less than it, judging by the juvenile nature of the friends’ chosen activities.

Throughout the economical running time, Barrett makes sure that the audience never loses sight of John’s sacrifices, though those around him might. Glassland is chock full of small tragedies; in addition to the aforementioned alcoholism and loss of innocence, there’s also John’s long-gone father, his equally absent older brother, and younger brother Kit, whose Down’s Syndrome has alienated his mother and left John holding the bag, as usual. Even John’s passengers have a downtrodden existence, particularly the mysterious and beautiful prostitute that he curiously eyes through his rear-view mirror. John has no choice but to be a realist, only daring to hope for the one small triumph of getting his mother into rehab. Even this is excruciatingly hard, first because of her reluctance to acknowledge the impact of her drinking on anyone other than herself, and then because of the economic demands required to keep her in treatment. To earn his mother’s health, John must make the biggest moral sacrifices of the film (and his life). This final sacrifice is hazily sketched, and the only place where the content and aesthetic of the film is less than unflinching. Invocations of Irish folklore and the sordidly unclear machinations of the criminal underworld seem fitting as a device to keep the focus on John’s internal struggle, rather than allowing the film to drift into wrong-man thriller territory.

The thing with kitchen-sink dramas is that they can devolve quickly into pity parties rather than the sympathetically realist character studies they are at their best. Glassland definitely tiptoes along that edge, pulled to the right side of the spectrum by a combination of stellar performances from Raynor and Collette and the expertly lensed claustrophobia that cinematographer Piers McGrail’s work imparts. In the end, what’s here is a very artful portrayal of the storms of the ultra-human condition, with just the hint of a relative ray of light at the end of the tunnel.

www.facebook.com/GlasslandFilm

Author rating: 8/10