Branagh’s Amarcord amid The Troubles
Leaving his ‘Poirot with a soul’ behind (see review below), this time K. Branagh walks down his own memory lane, departing sunny Egypt to get back ‘home’ in rainy 1969 Belfast, when The Troubles really started – and went on in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. The Troubles are part of The Irish Question, a master/slave relationship between England and Ireland that dates back to the Middle Ages. Inspired by the wind of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA, the discriminated Ulster Catholic minority, nationalist and republican, rebelled against the Protestants, unionist and loyalist. On the edge of another civil war, the UK sent the army to patrol the streets of Northern Ireland, adding more troubles to the existing ones and paving the way to terrorism (here is a BBC 10-part coverage called Northern Ireland Troubles). In this explosive background, the pre-adolescent Buddy of the film (Branagh’s alter-ego) has to grow up: the movie is a real coming-of-age tale in which nightmare meets nostalgia. There is a terrific warmth and tenderness to Kenneth Branagh’s elegiac, autobiographical movie about the Belfast of his childhood: spryly written, beautifully acted and shot in a lustrous monochrome … Some may feel that the film is sentimental or that it does not sufficiently conform to the template of political anger and despair considered appropriate for dramas about Northern Ireland and the Troubles … But this film has such emotional generosity and wit.
… Jamie Dornan plays a man who lives in north Belfast, a largely Protestant district but still with some Catholic families. He is an easygoing charmer, away in England a fair bit during the week, doing skilled carpentry work and harassed with the need to pay off a tax bill … The family includes his long-suffering wife (Caitríona Balfe) and two boys, the older Will (Lewis McAskie) and younger Buddy, played by newcomer Jude Hill, whose stunned, wide-eyed incomprehension sets the tone. The grandparents live with them under the same roof and are played with beguiling sweetness … Violence explodes when unionist hardmen burn the Catholics out of their homes and set up barricades to protect their new fiefdom [an area or a situation in which somebody has control or influence – It: feudo] against republican retaliation – a gangsterism that requires payments from local families, enforced by tough guy Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan), accepted more or less pragmatically … but resented by Dornan’s character … And poor Buddy just has to carry on with his life …
I liked the idea of setting the movie inside the Protestant side (usually the villains) and not in the traditional Protestants vs Catholics fight. In so doing, the conflict focuses on good and bad characters on the same side, or, better, among the rough violent characters and the more sensible and open-minded ones like Dornan. Branagh’s political attitude is detached throughout the film: this is not a political movie, but a study of human beings in times of trouble, with no Mother Mary whispering words of wisdom. The plot is poor but what counts is the feeling it arises: there’s a streak of innocence in the nightmare of this film.
Moreover, Branagh’s well-known love for the arts is felt everywhere, like in most of his works: the film within the film, the theatre within the theatre, Van Morrison’s heartbreaking soundtrack enrich this director’s amarcord and leaves the spectator with the feeling that sometimes there can be love where there’s none to be found.
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- The quotations are from The Guardian‘s review Kenneth Branagh’s euphoric eulogy to his home city
- Director, Producer, Writer: Kenneth Branagh