Everyman Bristol.
Belfast is a movie about a little boy growing up in Belfast at the very beginning of the Troubles. His family are Protestants, but there are Catholics on his street and they get on fine. Director Kenneth Branagh grew up in just such a mileu: I don't know if any of the incidents are real, but the atmosphere and sense of place are clearly drawn from life.
The opening scene sets the tone for the movie. Ever-so-slightly obvious; but very affecting. Happy working class kids from both backgrounds are playing knights in armour with dustbin lids and hopscotch on the pavement while happy women call them happily home for tea. And then, almost immediately, an angry mob marches in and starts breaking things. It tells us what the movie is about straight away, and its genuinely frightening. A little boy and his big brother hiding under a table in a nice 1960s front room as if there were an air-raid or a nuclear strike going on outside.
The sectarian violence doesn’t come from anywhere: a mob just spontaneously become enraged and start setting fire to cars. There’s no political context. I actually had to check a synopsis to make sure I was clear about who was attacking who: it’s Protestants who want to drive out the Catholics. Young Buddy (Jude Hill) asks his Pa (Jamie Dornan) if it was “our side” who did it; and Pa says that there is no “our side” and “their side”. Everything is shown from Buddy’s nine-year-old point of view: a little historical background seeps through in fragments of news reports and TV shows. (We see Robin Day interview Harold Wilson at one point, which makes some members of the audience feel rather old.) For Buddy,
catholics are strange people who can do whatever they like provided they confess it to the priest afterwards: people called Pat and Seamus are catholics but people called William are protestants. He suggests that his family convert, so they can stop going to church altogether but also be forgiven for it. He hears a terrible hellfire sermon in a Church of Ireland church and spends the rest of the movie worrying about which path he is on. Pa doesn’t care much about religion but sends the kids to church to please their Gran. When Buddy develops a crush on a Catholic girl in his class, Pa tells him she would be just as welcome in their house if she were a hindu or a vegetarian. He’s a good father but he’s in a wee bit of financial trouble, and frequently off working in England.
There is a lot of nice period detail: I was forcibly reminded that The Troubles broke out in Ireland while the Sixties were still in full Swing in London. Buddy and his family watch a lot of movies and TV shows: we see some Star Trek and Thunderbirds and One Million Years BC and 1960s adverts for washing powder. Buddy arguably sees the world through the lens of TV. As the troubles escalate, Pa has to decide whether to keep his family in Ireland or take them away to Canada or Australia. One of the protestant thugs is trying to force him to join The Cause. So naturally, while they are watching cowboy films on TV we see Grace Kelly telling Gary Cooper that he has to decide whether to stay in town and fight or leave with her on the Noon Train. (To which he memorably does not reply “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do”.) And when Pa very bravely stands up to the leader of the sectarian thugs, putting his life in serious danger, Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling plays at some length over the soundtrack. (Fun fact: It’s the version that was released as a pop record, not the actual theme from High Noon: “ you made that promise as a bride” as opposed to “you made that promise when we wed”.) The film is shot in black and white, but the movies themselves are in colour: at one point we see colour pictures reflected in Granny’s monochrome glasses. When Buddy is persuaded to join in the looting of a Catholic shop, all he can bring himself to take is the washing powder from the advert. Because “it’s biological”.
Is it all just a little bit too Irish -- veering occasionally into Fake Blarney territory? Irish born Ciaran Hands does a lovely turn as Buddy grandfather (“Pop”) but I did wonder if his endless stream of wit and folk wisdom -- always taking Buddy seriously and offering him sensible advise -- wasn’t something of a literary type. He worked as a coal miner in England and now has something wrong with his lungs. “I’m not going anywhere you won’t find me” he tells his grandson. (Spoiler: There is a wake.) But are posh English ladies even allowed to play abrasive-but-loverable Irish grannies, even when they do it as well as Judy Dench? There’s a fine moment where an old lady starts yelling out Oh Danny Boy at an informal street party. (“What did you do with the money?” “What money?” “The money your mam gave you for singing lessons.”) But is this a bit too much like chirpy cockneys singing the Lambeth Walk?
One can't help comparing the film with This Is England, another highly specific evocation of time and place with a really remarkable child actor at the centre. Jude Hill’s Buddy is entirely natural and entirely believable, taking the world seriously, asking the hard questions, developing a plausible puppy-love for his classmate but throwing an incredibly babyish tantrum when it is suggested that the family might leave Granny and Pop and go and live in England. It also has more than a whiff of The Long Day Closes, although with fewer long silences.
It shows very convincingly how the Troubles -- the Irish civil war -- crept up and became part of the lives of these very ordinary people, who were still trying, and to a great extent living, a normal life while it was going on around them. Violence becomes the New Normal. They are still worried about paying back-taxes and passing maths tests even as the British army arrives and barricades are put up at the end of their. street. (To that extent, the analogy with High Noon is quite apt: the Western Pioneers living in nice houses with china and picket fences, knowing that everything could break down into anarchy when the bad guys ride into town.) Whether or not the characters are stereotypes, I found them very engaging. The romance between the two kids is not at all creepy or sentimental, it’s just really nicely done. The relationship between the old people is also very touching. When Buddy complains that in England no-one will understand his accent, Pop says that he hasn’t understood a word Grandma has said for fifty years. But when they are alone together and its clear that Pop is seriously ill, they fall to talking about when they were young lovers...
This film will win Oscars because it is the kind of film that wins Oscars. But you should probably go and see it in any case. Sad, funny and clever at the same time. A bit like life.
Buddy also likes American comics; sensible lad. At one point he is seen reading Thor (possibly issue 160). A few years back, there was a big Hollywood movie based on Thor. Can anyone remember who directed it?
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