Into The West (1992) tells the story of two boys and their journey west on the back of an extraordinary white horse, Tir na nOg. Written by someone else, the film might have been another in a long line of corny, stage-Irish stories, but Jim Sheridan's script is different: his handling of the characters and straightforward treatment of the tale's magical elements help make Into the West attractive to many viewers.

Almost uniquely, its central characters are Travellers, who have been largely ignored in Irish cinema. Into the West recognises their community as an independent and separate culture.

Sheridan, best known as a director, didn't direct this one: British director Mike Newell - who later conquered the world with his smash hit Four Weddings and a Funeral - brought his comic touch to the distinctly Irish material.

The story concerns Tito and Ossie, children whose mother is dead and whose father, Papa Riley, has fallen from being Traveller king to a miserable "settled" life in a Ballymun flat. The narrative is eventually driven by their escape - from that life, from corrupt and bumbling gardai and from a particularly nasty businessman who had stolen Tir na nOg - on the back of this otherworldly horse.

It is clear from its first appearance on a magically moonlit beach that this is no ordinary horse. In the end it carries young Ossie out to sea, where he seems to drown. Then the boy revives, telling Tito and Papa that he has seen his mother.

The way the film combines gritty images of urban poverty with fairytale elements of fantasy makes it an example of magic realism, a literary and film style that places surreal events in an everyday context.

roots in mythology

Into the West couldn't be described as a simple re-telling of an Irish myth. Nonetheless, it contains enough pointers to let us know that some grasp of the mythology will enrich our understanding of the story. As Grandpa Ward explains to the boys, Tir na nOg is the name for the "land of eternal youth" in the oft- told version of the story of Oisin and Niamh. In that story, Oisin (Ossie?), the warrior-poet and son of Fionn Mac Cumhaill, meets the beautiful Niamh, and quickly decides to accompany her across the sea on her white horse to Tir na nOg. Three hundred years later his determination to return to Ireland wins the day, and he does so with Niamh's warning that he must never dismount and touch Irish soil. Having crossed the sea and found his home country irretrievably changed, he ignores the warning - and so rapidly ages and dies. The myth is about "return" as much as about quest. In Into the West, Ossie's travels carry him to his origins: to the grave of his mother - who died in childbirth - and to the mystical underwater encounter with her.

In his search for the boys, Papa finds himself undergoing a more self-conscious return: to his people and the Travellers' way of life he had abandoned when his wife died.

an Irish western?

What better place than Ireland, an island off the west coast of Europe, to explore the ancient romantic idea of "going west" as a voyage of self- discovery?

American movies - the dominant films of our culture - have long been preoccupied with the idea of the frontier as a venue for learning about one's own capacities. Like older mythology, the western quest narrative provides an archetype around which many writers and film-makers have crafted their own stories.

Into the West refers repeatedly to that tradition; in fact, some people might see it as, in part, a series of jokes about the idea of the west - with its cowboy motifs transferred to Ballymun towers.

Certainly, anyone who knows anything about the geography of Ireland - and surely that includes some American cinema-goers - will realise that Ossie and Tito can hardly have gone west across the whole of Ireland to the Atlantic.

So did they go "into the west" at all?

screenings

Into the West is one of the most popular Irish films for young people of recent years. The Film Institute of Ireland has organised a series of screenings in the Irish Film Centre, Dublin, for both secondary and primary school students. The primary-school screening is next Monday, September 29th, at 10 a.m.

Film-studies teachers will also have an opportunity to attend a free seminar on Saturday, October 4th, at 11 a.m., where approaches to the film will be discussed. The screenings for second-level students are on Monday, October 13th; Monday, October 20th and Friday, October 24th, all at 10.30 a.m. Admission to screenings is £1.50 per person.

Booking for all of these events is through the institute (tel: (01) 679 5744; fax: (01) 671 1453).