"Ironweed" is a very difficult film to watch. After all, all the folks in the film are down and out bums...homeless alcoholics who barely exist back during the Great Depression. Though the course of the film, you learn a bit more about them and their lives. The main character is Francis (Jack Nicholson)...a man burdened with memories of the wrongs he's done...and probably much of the reason he's a drunk. His friend is Helen (Meryl Streep),a woman who is just as bad off as he is...barely getting by and living on the streets.

This film is about the lives of people who are extremely damaged alcoholics living on the streets as well as the cruelty that is sometimes inflicted on them. It's the sort of story that is high on realism and also painful and awful to watch...and goes on for 143 minutes. It's so unpleasant that it isn't surprising that the movie lost a ton of money. The acting, not surprisingly, is very good....Streep and Nicholson are great actors...and they both received Oscar nominations for this film. But the story is so unpleasant I cannot imagine most folks watching it...and apparently they didn't. Interestingly, when I used to work in a halfway house for addicts, the film was often shown there....to show the residents where they are headed unless they make some changes.

If you wanted to see another film like this one, try "Leaving Las Vegas". But I recommend you perhaps watch a comedy or something pleasant after you see "Ironweed", as it could easily leave you depressed...especially by the time the film ends.

It's 1938 Albany, NY. Francis Phelan (Jack Nicholson) is a former baseball player and a drunken drifter. His friend Rudy (Tom Waits) is dying of cancer. He visits his son's grave lamenting accidentally killing him after four beers. He abandoned his family many years ago. He finds his drinking buddy Helen Archer (Meryl Streep) at the mission. He is haunted by three ghosts including a scab (Nathan Lane) he killed as a striking trolley worker and a hobo who tried to chop off his feet. He visits his wife Annie Phelan (Carroll Baker).

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep get to do some good acting. The story meanders quite a lot. It's not a plot where there is a place to go. I guess Francis does have a destination and possibly salvation. The main problem for me is that Nicholson and Streep separate midway through the movie. Streep is late to the movie to begin with. This needs both great actors together for the whole movie.

Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep portray a pair of down and out derelicts caught in the throes of the Great Depression in Albany, New York. The year is 1938, with church missions and soup kitchens the norm for those without work and no other means of support. What comes across most disturbing perhaps is the day to day existence of a guy like Francis Phelan (Nicholson),scrabbling for pick up work for a few dollars a day, and chucking it when the boss turns out to be a heel. A dollar went a lot further back in the Thirties, but it's disconcerting to see someone content enough to get by on a few bucks for a cheap meal and a flop at a crummy rooming house.

The larger story involves Fran's search for some minor shot at redemption following the two decade absence from his family, aggravated in no small part by the death of an infant son as a result of his drinking. He's unable to forgive himself, even if a reconciliation with his ex-wife (Carroll Baker) offers some small measure of reassurance. Throughout the film, Fran has to confront the ghosts of his past, both literally and figuratively. He continually envisions a man he killed accidentally during a worker's strike decades earlier, a tramp who died attempting to outrun the cops, and a fellow hobo who would have taken his feet along with the shoes he coveted aboard a train car.

Through it all however, one gets the sense that Fran's basically a good guy, and Helen's (Streep) a good gal. It's just that they've been down so long, there doesn't seem to be any hope of digging one's way out. The bar scene at Oscar Reo's (Fred Gwynne) saloon is one of the highlights of a picture that overall is generally depressing. It's when Helen offers a singing tribute to her partner in an inspiring rendition of 'He's Me Pal', in her mind captivating a rapt audience at the Eldorado, but in actuality, merely appeasing the handful of daily customers. In what would be a somewhat prophetic pronouncement that would turn into another Nicholson picture some ten years later, Fran turns to her and comments, "By God Helen, that's As Good As it Gets".