The Irish folk song “Wild Mountain Thyme” expresses romantic ardor via an ecstatic celebration of the mingling of tradition and homestead. It’s beautiful and quite moving, and in his film of the same name, writer-director John Patrick Shanley attempts to merge the song’s earthy atmosphere with the tropes of a rom-com, contrasting frenetic modern mores with the alluring, often constricting myths associated with heritage. Shanley achieved this kind of balance in his screenplay for Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck, as his characters suggested full-blooded humans torn between family and their passions and idiosyncrasies. In Wild Mountain Thyme, though, this whimsical battle feels forced, as the characters are retrograde ciphers moved in unconvincing directions by stale plot machinery.
For Wild Mountain Thyme to work, you have to find the central conceit romantic rather than pathological. Rosemary (Emily Blunt) and Anthony (Jamie Dornan) have grown up alongside one another on neighboring farms somewhere in the lush Irish countryside and have been in love for years. Their parents are dying and they’re set to inherit their respective farms, and Rosemary has been waiting decades for Anthony to make the first romantic move—any move. If Rosemary and Anthony were teenagers or even in the first flushes of adulthood, this idea might’ve been charming, but they’re in their late 30s, seemingly having spent their entire lives in a loveless, pseudo-virginal fugue state dominated by fealty to their elders. Astonishingly, Shanley doesn’t mine this situation for much pathos or even comedy, accepting Rosemary and Anthony’s arrested development on fairy-tale terms that come to seem particularly absurd when a recognizably normal adult human being, Adam (Jon Hamm), enters their lives.
Rosemary and Anthony’s timidity is often equated to the Irish’s modesty and devotion to custom—an equivocation so naïve that it borders on condescension. The protagonists are dull, courtly stereotypes of star-crossed lovers, while Adam is a symbol of American vulgarity. Such a contrast could’ve been invested with the zing that powered so many comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, except that Adam’s motivations make no sense and he’s essentially written out of the film early on; Shanley evinces so little imagination here that he doesn’t even bother to render Adam and his luxurious lifestyle a tempting alternative for Rosemary. The narrative’s other complications—mostly pertaining to a fight with Anthony’s father, Tony (Christopher Walken), over land inheritance—are also haphazardly introduced and discarded. If you expect Rosemary and Anthony’s faux relationship to be tested by Tony’s petulance, prepare to be disappointed, as Rosemary is a complacent foil who’s hopelessly devoted to the bland Anthony.
Why does Anthony so steadfastly resist the advances of the lovely and obviously interested Rosemary, and why does she continue to tolerate his rude, borderline insane daddy’s-boy gestures? Shanley provides a memorably ludicrous answer, but the real reason is that otherwise there would be no film. Shanley doesn’t convincingly keep his lovers apart until the third act, but rather throws overt plot curlicues at them until enough running time has elapsed to justify the inevitable romantic consummation. Remarkably given the circumstances, Blunt invests Rosemary with a striking and credible romantic urgency, as evinced by the film’s one great scene, in which she sings the title song. Meanwhile, Dornan is a stiff whom Hamm immediately upstages, and this dynamic underscores why Wild Mountain Thyme is so tedious and unsatisfying: You’re inadvertently compelled to fear for the heroine, who’s settling—out of fear of the unknown, out of lack of self-confidence—for someone unworthy of her. And Shanley doesn’t seem to share this fear. For him, complacency makes for a happy ending.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.