Shit went down in Belfast, 1969, no question … but if these guys went into detail about all that, this film wouldn’t be happy or uplifting, so instead Belfast asked the question, “What is home worth? Is it worth religious –based terrorism on your street? Is it worth having your own personal mafia thug? Is it worth only one day of Jamie Dornan every two weeks?”
Wait. I can answer that last one. Yes. Yes, it is. Even if the family home doesn’t have a sex torture dungeon.
Belfast is a film so schizophrenic in nature I expected it to alternate scenes of color and b&w. When the film opens, the kids are playing and everybody is happy, woo! The scene is absurdly busy. It seems nobody for five blocks considered staying indoors. Then the Protestant firebomb squad shows. In three seconds, the film goes from happy chaos to stressful chaos. Don’t worry, we will be back to happy before long. This film has little stomach for the terror stress it induced.
Our hero is Buddy (Jude Hill), a naïve child in love with the girl two blocks down. You think a few Molotov cocktails are gonna slow Buddy down? Heck no! He’s got maths to figure out so he can claim class pole position next to his future wife. Pacing Buddy in his effort to conquer life are an unspecified number of siblings, some very notable live-in grandparents (Judy Dench and Ciarán Hinds), a mother who may or may not be pregnant again (Caitríona Balfe) and an absentee father (Dornan).
When Jamie Dornan finally returns, we wonder if he has a gambling problem, a drinking problem, a money problem, a womanizing problem … all of the above … none of the above. Ah, but what is exactly on screen is a shakedown problem. You see, the block was firebombed by Protestants hoping to excise Catholics. (personally, I can’t imagine being so worked up just because one side has a Pope and the other doesn’t, but hey, I’m one of those crazy folks who believes religion should be free and legal and practiced nowhere near government.) The Buddy family are Catholic-sympathetic Protestants. At some point they’ll probably have to choose. But not now, Buddy has got kid stuff to worry about.
This whole film is like watching the final confrontation scene in The Wizard of Oz: “Pay no attention to the violent terrorism display we
presented in the opening of the film.” Um, ok. Well, why did you have it then? People move for all sorts of reasons, and Belfast made it perfectly clear that (for this family) terrorism was not among them. The thing is, you can’t really firebomb a block and not have that dominate the story you want to tell. Or, I suppose you can; it just won’t strike me as quite as realistic as you’re going for. Belfast is almost entirely epitomized by the afternoon funeral of a close family member followed by live band and dirty dancing in the evening. I appreciate that such is closer to the schizophrenic nature of life itself, but on screen it tells me you didn’t have balls enough to make the tragedy you’re hinting at.
Belfast questions a great deal of what is it to be Irish. Are the Irish fighters or accepters, moderates or –holics, people who die with pride or people who sensibly move away? The film claims it’s all of the above, which brings a very human touch to our stereotypes of the Irish, especially those who live in Northern Ireland. The scenes are acceptable and occasionally rise to emotional, but just as soon as something grips us, we are just-as-quickly relieved from our emotional investment … take the moment where Pa diffuses an armed hostage situation by tossing a shoe or something to that effect. I think this is a skillful film made by a skillful hand (Kenneth Branagh) that simply edited out all the parts where great movies happen. What we are left with is amiable but empty; Branagh, you made either a short story long or a long story short, but either way, the film hits not nearly as hard as the material suggests.
Northern Ireland, I’ll give you the gist
Has a most tragic past, I insist
Yet little on screen
Shows where they’ve been
We need a sequel to address what they missed
Rated PG-13, 98 Minutes
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Kenneth Branagh
Genre: Seems pretty important, doesn’t it?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Irish
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Irish
