Imdb Ranking 6.1
The movie is set in Donegal in 1936. The narrator, Michael, is looking back on his time as a young boy grows up with his mother and four spinster sisters in 1930's Ireland. The oldest boy in the family, Jack came back home that summer after twenty five years as a priest in Africa. The boy's mother, Christina, was the youngest in the family. Aunt Kate (Meryl Streep) was a strict school teacher. Agnes, Rose, and Margaret were the other aunts. Rose is what you would call a little slow. They all set out to meet Father Jack who was coming in on a bus.
Father Jack is a senile and doesn't even know he is home in Ballybeg. The house has received at radio that year and the woman listen and dance to the music. Father Jack asks about Michael's father, and is told Christina never married the father. When Father Jack goes to dance, Kate tells him that priests don't dance. She also takes Rose to rask for wanting to go out with a man who is separated from his wife.
Then Gerry, Michael's fathher, pulls up on a motorcycle and the sisters are in a tizzy. He has been gone for eighteen months. He has been in Dublin teaching ballroom dancing. He's come to say goodbye. He's going to Spain to fight in the International Brigade against Franco.
The local priest talks to Kate and tells her that his brother Jack is not well : he has heard all about it He also tells her that he might have to let her go as a teacher because the numbers at the school are falling. Is she losing her job because of some scandal about her brother/
Kate can't help but comment on everything. Constantly taking shots at Rose for liking the divorced man, and for Christina for having a baby out of wedlock and at Gerry for not supporting his child.
Jack tells the sisters that "In Africa when we wanted to please the spirits we killed a rooster or a small goat." Kate thinks he has lost his mind. Agnes suggests that they all go to the harvest dance. It's the festival of Lughnasa and all the girls, except Kate, want to go dance.
Jack, who at times seems really to have lost it, is beating out on pots with sticks. He said: 'I was talking to Obi ,,, The Great Goddess of the earth". He said they paint their faces and dance. When Michael wants to sleep with his dad in the barn, Kate says no.
The girls look back by scrapbooks and talk about some love affairs gone by. They then sing some songs. Rose takes a canoe trip with her Danny and then goes with him to a dance up in the back hills. Father Jack also makes his way up there and thinks he is back in Africa. Rose feels uncomfortable with the pagans up there and comes back to her very concerned sisters.
Gerry fixes the radio and all the girls break out in a wild jig. But Kate has lost her job and because of a new factory in Donegal Town there is going to be no more money made from knitting. To make things easier on the others Agnes and Rose went to London without telling anyone and were never heard from again. Aunt Kate was inconsolable.
A good movie, with really good acting. Well worth seeing.
