Small lives are not the stuff of spectacle. They are not performed on a vast screen to the fife and drum of a Colonel Bogey March. Unfortunately, Director David Lean seems to have become so obsessed with historical immensity (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago) that he has lost the capacity to focus on the troubled existence of ordinary people. The loss is plain in his wide-screen nightmare, Ryan's Daughter.
A pity it is too, because the little hamlet of Kirrary, perched on the wild southwestern coast of Ireland, is populated with handsome and talented characters. There...
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