Belfast: The Troubles through a Child's Eyes

 

BELFAST (2021)

Directed and written by Kenneth Branagh

Focus Features, 98 minutes, PG-13 (some violence)

★★★★★

 

 

Belfast has won scads of awards already and will certainly be nominated for Oscars as well, though it’s unlikely to win many given that American audiences will find its Irish accents difficult to understand. It’s definitely worth putting on your Netflix queue though and watching it with subtitles.

 

Belfast is a semi-autobiographical take on director/writer Kenneth Branagh’s childhood. Branagh (b. 1960) was 9-years-old when “The Troubles” erupted in Northern Ireland, the sectarian violence between Protestants and Catholics that left more than 3,500 people dead before they quelled in 1998. We pick up the story in 1969, when Protestant and Irish Republican Army thugs turned neighbor against neighbor. That’s exactly what happened in Tigers Bay, Branagh’s lower middle-class section of the city where Catholics and Protestants peacefully intermingled. The film blames Protestants for precipitating violence, which is perhaps how he remembered it, but it would be either naïve or blindly nationalist to interpret the tragedy within any sort of white hat/black hat framework.

 

In Belfast, Branagh’s alter-ego is Buddy (Jude Hill), a charming, whip smart towhead. Buddy’s family is Protestant, and that’s one of several clever and effective choices made in the film. The second was the decision to depersonalize the conflict by identifying key players by their roles rather than names. Buddy’s parents are simply “Ma” (Catríona Balfe) and “Pa” (Jamie Duncan), and his grandparents, “Granny” (Judi Dench) and “Pop” (Ciarán Hinds). Another deft touch was instructing cinematographer Harris Zambarloukos to use low-angle shots so that we experience The Troubles from a child’s POV, right down to the way things were “seen” on store shelves.

 

Buddy and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) live carefree days playing football (soccer) and other games in the narrow streets lining the rowhouses and young Buddy has a wicked crush on flaxen-haired Catherine (Olive Tennant), a Catholic. It’s such an infatuation that he works hard on his math and other subjects so that he can eventually sit across for Catherine. (The teacher stratifies the class according to their grades.) Pa, like Branagh’s actual father William, works in England as a plumber and joiner for a firm that specializes in suspended ceilings and is usually home only on weekends. That’s not a popular place to earn one’s bread when violence flares and even the local Protestant minister (Turlough Convery) resorts to histrionics. And it’s really uncomfortable as children begin to form gangs and a puffed-up criminal named Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) applies pressure to Pa to choose sides (which he refuses to do). As if the family doesn’t have enough problems with their tax bills, Pa’s gambling, and Pop’s declining health.

 

Jude Hill is, simply, adorable and, for a child, a strong actor. He’s the sort who practically invites you to jostle his hair and take him out for an ice lolly. It’s another inspired choice, as it drives home the idea that children are the real victims of ancient hatreds. (In “House of Orange, the last song Stan Rogers wrote before his death in 1983, he implored: Their sons have no politics. None can recall/Allegiance from long generations before. O’this or O’that name can’t matter at all/Or be cause enough for to war.)  Spot on! The film is really about the noncomprehending silent victims, so don’t expect anything from Dornan that approaches his rakishness in Fifty Shades of Grey; if anything, Balfe provides more steam. Though it’s Hill’s film, Hands comes close to stealing his thunder. He’s the kind of grandpa everyone wants–a lovable rascal with a healthy disregard for convention, a quick tongue, and deep love for his wife and grandkids. He can even discourse on why it’s a good thing to have outdoor toilets rather than in-house facilities and how to fool teachers by writing unclear numbers on homework papers. Dench also does a fine job of playing against her exalted reputation. She’s dowdy and stays within herself to drive home the same point as Balfe: In 1969, Northern Ireland was decidedly patriarchal.

 

It should be said that this is by no means an exhaustive or balanced look at The Troubles, nor should it be if your choice is to focus on kids and not politics. Objectively speaking, the film could have been longer to flesh out characters and give more background. Branagh, of course, knows the who’s who of his boyhood, but viewers don’t necessarily bring that foreknowledge into the theater.  The film is a scant 98 minutes, some in period back and white and others in color. Another 10-15 minutes could have sharpened backstories, though again I suspect Branagh wanted us to see types rather than getting bogged down in the lives of adults. If I might add still another excellent decision, though, Branagh’s decision to use Van Morrison songs as a soundtrack enhances the film.

 

If you’re wondering, Branagh’s father saw the handwriting on the wall and moved his family out of Northern Ireland before the worst violence broke out. They did not, however, go to London as the film suggests, rather they moved to Reading, about 40 miles southwest of London. Nonetheless, I guess we could say Branagh eventually did pretty well for himself.

 

Rob Weir