It took two months to build the Roden Lane set, and it will take two days to demolish it next week. Roden Lane, the street where author Frank McCourt grew up in abject poverty in Limerick in the 1930s, was recreated on a disused site off Benburb Street in Dublin, a few yards away from the Collins Barracks museum.
The dilapidated exteriors of about two dozen houses were constructed, with little alleyways leading off them. At the end of the muddy, cobbled street is the McCourt home; its interior is miles away, at Ardmore Studios in Bray, Co Wicklow.
On the set last week, as the film of Angela's Ashes moves into its final days of shooting, the extras are moving into position. Today's call-sheet specifies 36 of them - men, women and a lot of thin children, and one described as "Skinny Adolescent". The livestock requirement for the day includes four horses, four dogs and three pigs.
Lines of washing hang high across the street, linking the houses, as Alan Parker sets up the scene in which the neighbours welcome young Frank McCourt home from hospital. Behind the set is a tent with welcome heaters, a running buffet and self-service tea and coffee. Further down Benburb Street is the main catering area where breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea are served to the 140 cast and crew at breaks in the shooting.
It has been a tough shoot, according to Parker. "Fighting the weather and losing the light earlier every day, you have to plan so carefully," he says, walking down the set. "To their credit, everyone on the film worked so hard. I look at what we did and I think we've done such good work."
Parker's evident enthusiasm for the film is echoed by many of his cast and crew. "It's been extraordinary, and I think he knows he's got something extraordinary," says the movie's costume designer, Consolata Boyle. "Something very special has been happening on the set."
Emily Watson, who plays Frank's much-suffering mother, Angela, describes it as a beautiful story, a survivor's story. "What I really love about it is the way that all these awful things happen, yet he has such a sense of joy and blamelessness. And Alan works so well with the children. When you meet him he's a very straightforward bloke, but when you see him working, he's incredibly poetic in the way he understands and sees things."
"The only time I felt this kind of buzz on a film before was when we did Trainspotting," says Robert Carlyle, who plays Angela's alcoholic husband, Malachy. "On the surface the story is tragic, but ultimately it's a triumph, how someone escaped that poverty. And there's a lot of humour in it, too, which is what binds people together in really hard times. If you don't laugh, you're going to cry."
Alan Parker has been making movies for more than 20 years - among them Midnight Express, Birdy, Angel Heart, Mississippi Burning, The Commitments and Evita - but has never been as emotionally immersed in a film as he is in Angela's Ashes. "It's impossible not to be emotionally involved with it," he says. "Even when I made Midnight Express, which was pretty harrowing, too, I felt I was observing someone else's life - but I don't feel estranged from this story for one second. "It's no longer a film, in a way. At the beginning it seemed like someone else's story, someone else's country, someone else's culture, even though it's a magical book and every scene is so cinematic. Now I feel I completely understand it. I've gotten right inside it. If Malachy or Alfie McCourt came in now, I could talk to them about anything in their lives. I no longer make decisions as a director, more as a member of the family. It's like I was there before I filmed it."
Frank McCourt has been to visit the film set twice, first for the shooting of the schoolroom scenes and then returning with a crew from the American television programme, 60 Minutes, when Parker was filming at Pearse Street railway station. "I hate video cameras on the set, they're so intrusive," says Parker, "but then I look at Frank and I admire him so much. I feel very close to him because of the story. He's like a favourite uncle to me."
Adapting McCourt's book for the screen involved leaving out a few chapters, Parker says. "I think the people who know the book might ask what happened to Mr Timoney, the blind man, for example," he says. "But we haven't left out much of the book. I don't know what will appear in the final film at this stage. If everything we shot is left in, it's going to be a very long film. I think about two-and-a-quarter hours should be enough for any film, so maybe we'll do a longer video version. Anyhow, that's all down the line for now."
Parker says he knows that when he settles down to his Christmas dinner in London he will be missing the boys who play young Frank in his film. He speaks of them with great affection and pride bordering on the paternal. "I've been so lucky with the kids because we had so many choices," he says. "Joe Breen is so brilliant and Ciaran Owens is sensational. I'd adopt them tomorrow! I'll go home for Christmas and sit at the table and wonder where Joe and Ciaran are."
More than 15,000 children from all over Ireland auditioned for roles in Parker's film before he settled on the three youngsters to play Frank McCourt. Eight-year-old Joe Breen, a Wexford farmer's son with no acting experience, plays Frank from the ages of five to eight years. Ciaran Owens, a 12-year-old Cavan schoolboy who has appeared in several films, takes on the character from eight to 13 years of age. And Michael Legge, who is 19, from Newry and has experience in theatre and film and television, plays Frank between the ages of 13 and 17.
"Michael has the hardest job," says Parker. "He has to follow Joe and Ciaran in the film, and Ciaran has the lion's share of the scenes featuring the young Frank. In any other film Michael would be hailed as a real discovery, but he's got two really hard acts to follow here. Joe and Ciaran are just amazing. Joe knows the entire script - not just his own lines, but everyone else's too. I have three sons of my own, but Joe feels like a son to me. We're all very close."