Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage: 10 years on

A decade on from its original release, Lenny Abrahamson’s melancholy character study remains one of the crowing achievements of Irish cinema.

October this year will mark ten years since the original release of Lenny Abrahamson’s Garage, which concluded months of sensational reviews and awards on the international film festival circuit, from Cannes to Toronto.

Today, the Dublin director’s second feature remains one of the most intensely heartbreaking and stand out achievements Irish cinema has produced.

Fresh from Adam & Paul, their popular Dublin set debut feature which tracks a day in the life of two city drug addicts, Abrahamson and screen writer Mark O’Halloran sought a change of scenery for their second picture, fleeing to the countryside, and the luscious open terrain of the midlands.

Shot in Offaly, Tipperary and East Galway, Garage is set in a non-descript small Irish town over an inherently Irish summer, where the season is detected not by a warming of the weather but a lengthening of the still, dull days.

Abrahamson’s film is primarily a character study, scrutinising the simple life of Josie, played in a masterful piece of casting by Pat Shortt.

Shortt made his name in Ireland in the 90s as a slapstick comic generally portraying dim caricatures, such as a recurring role in Father Ted as ‘I shot JR’ t-shirt wearing Tom, or his role as one half of the comic duo D’Unbelievables.

Casting Shortt as a tragic and doomed character rooted in the same community he had depicted with care free jest in his comedy routines allows us to identify with him instantaneously. We initially see him much like the rest of his small town’s inhabitants do, as something of a joke figure. This presumption reinforces the tragedy that engulfs Garage.

Josie runs the local garage, and has done for as long as anyone cares to remember. He is overly polite, awkward and obviously in need of special attention which is not forth coming from anyone in his life. He is a character that exists in every town and community in the country.

He fills his days by carrying out menial tasks in the garage, walking to the town to purchase the makings of his tea, traipsing around the towns outskirts and abandoned old railway before returning again after dark to visit Duignan’s, the local pub.

Shortt won the IFTA for Best Actor for his performance and is indeed a revelation here; revealing a depth to his acting few imagined was present. His languid reactions and ambling walk sprinkle the character with authenticity but it’s his natural comic timing that cements this great performance.

In one particular scene Josie chats to the elderly Mr.Skerrit, played by Tom Hickey. After some small talk reminiscing about fishing for pike and eels, Mr. Skerrit begins to breakdown, mourning the recent passing of his son. All the simple minded Josie can do is offer Mr.Skerrit a reassuring ‘now’ before returning to the conversation of fishing, while the visibly troubled Mr. Skerrit weeps next to him. ‘Sorry, I’m bad some days,’ he tells Josie. ‘You think it’s going to stop. But it never stops.’ To this Josie responds with another fishing reference. We see that he cannot command any conversation beyond rudimentary small talk.

In this sequence Abrahamson is happy to let the pauses hold for as long as they need to. In a manner that calls to mind the unorthodox art house films of the French new wave, the effect makes for an excruciatingly exceptional scene.

The supporting characters in Garage are struggling with their own lot in life and cannot, or choose not, to see that Josie is in need of special consideration. He is a figure of fun, out rightly bullied by the bitter and nasty Breffni, played by Don Wycherley of Bachelors Walk, while passively snickered at by other dwellers of Duignan’s pub. Only shop assistant Carmel, played by Anne-Marie Duff of Shameless, shows any interest in looking after Josie, but even her patience runs swiftly thin.

Garage is largely about the loneliness of Josie. But Abrahamson fills his film with a supporting cast of similarly lonesome souls. Carmel’s broken down relationship is only ever hinted at yet wholly present. We feel even the obnoxious Breffni is concealing some life wounds. Abrahamson presents this town as one that, along with the lives of its residents and despite the references to ‘building in the town’, has been left behind by Celtic Tiger Ireland.

Josie is of course more susceptible to life’s bumps then other characters. Over the summer he is joined at the garage by quiet and introverted teenager, David. Due to Josie’s affable nature the morose David quickly grows fond of him and the two strike up an unlikely friendship, though this is largely based on Josie giving the 15-year-old David cans of beer after work.

Later, when Josie shows David a porn film in what he believes is a case of humour, the young David recognises a line has been crossed. The incident leads to Josie losing the only thing that gave his life meaning — the garage.

In an agonising penultimate scene Josie is visited in the garage by the owner, Mr. Gallagher, to be told either the garage, or his job there, is no more. We can’t be sure exactly which it is because Abrahamson shoots the scene with little dialogue.

Instead he shows us Josie clumsily making tea while Mr. Gallagher observes him somberly. The only discussion between the two men surrounds whether the milk is sour. Again, Josie only seems able to talk about trivial matters.

Another director would have shot the scene with Mr. Gallagher explaining to Josie why the Garage is no more but Abrahamson recognised this was not necessary. The look on Mr. Gallagher’s face tells us more than any further dialogue could have.

What follows is Josie’s presumed suicide. He wakes in the night and, unable to sleep, makes his way to a nearby lake. Here, he removes his shoes and hat and allows his body to limply wade into the water. The screen goes black just before he disappears below the lakes surface.

Throughout the film Josie has visited a field where a horse is tied by a piece of rope to a tyre. In Garage’s final shot we see the horse, now freed from the rope and tyre, he looks into the camera before making his way down an abandoned railway track. We’re left with the suggestion that like Josie, the horse has been released from his pain.

Garage is about our own humanity, or lack thereof, to those just a little bit different to ourselves, and its subtle and devastating power is one of the crowning achievements of Irish cinema.

The Shakespearian definition of a tragedy is a downfall caused by one’s own doing. Josie’s actions caused his own end but simply because he did not have the ability to tell basic right from wrong. This is a film about how nobody made any attempt to educate him on the difference.