Belfast – seeing The Troubles through a child’s eyes

Belfast, the semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Kenneth Branagh, opens with what could be viewed as a rosy-tinted remembrance of life on a working-class terraced street in Northern Ireland’s capital in the late 1960s.

As nine-year-old Buddy returns home one summer evening, brandishing a wooden sword and a dustbin lid shield, playing at being the knight of his daydreams, the streets are full of children playing – ‘were there really so many children?’ you might think – while adults hang around chatting.

 

But just as you might be thinking that, a masked gang arrives to start a riot and things turn seriously nasty. They don’t care if children, women, the elderly – Protestant or Catholic – gets in the way.

 

Because this is August 1969, and the aim of the violence is really quite simple: to create a climate of fear that tells the Catholic residents on this mixed street that they must leave. Or terrorism, as we might call it.

 

The film shows a series of episodes in Buddy’s life at this time. His Pa (Jamie Dornan) is working in England as a joiner and can only visit every few weeks, so the family of Buddy (Jude Hill) and his older brother Will (Lewis McAskie) is held together by Ma (Caitríona Balfe), with help from grandparents Pop (Ciarán Hinds) and Granny (Judi Dench).

 

The character of Pa can feel like a bit of a type at times – he likes the horses to the detriment of the family finances, but he does also have greater complexity.

 

The family is Protestant but not particularly religious and gets along perfectly fine with its Catholic neighbours. However, as Pa continues to refuse the increasing threats of the local Protestant gang leader Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) to get involved in their sectarian ‘improvement’ of the area, the danger for the family, as to the community as a whole, grows.

 

And while it seems fanciful when Pa tries to suggest emigration to Australia or Canada to Ma, when he is offered permanent employment in England, with the prospect of better pay and better housing, the increasing threat moves them closer to a decision.

 

But for Ma – and for Buddy – the prospect of leaving their home, families, friends and much more is terrifying.

 

While Branagh’s film has already garnered awards and much praise, it has also been criticised in some quarters for being overly sentimental and for downplaying The Troubles.

 

I’m long enough in the tooth to remember reports from Northern Ireland – and of bombings in England. I remember bomb hoaxes at my girls’ grammar school on the outskirts of Manchester in the 1970s, when we would stand for ages in the cold while the fire brigade checked the building. Because you couldn’t afford to be casual.

 

I remember too, the revived IRA campaign – the bombs in the City of London, one of which rattled the windows of the flat that The Other Half and I shared, one evening when I was home alone. It was terrifying. And another on a morning when I looked out from our bedroom window and saw the cloud from the explosion rising around the Nat-West building, less than a mile away. The south-west of traditionally working-class Hackney is a stone’s throw from the City.

 

In other words, I most certainly would not play down the history of what happened.

 

But back to Branagh’s film specifically. It makes clear, for instance, that the British troops sent to Belfast to stop the violence seemed remarkably forgetful about who they were supposed to be protecting. It is full of the menace as it shows thugs taking over neighbourhoods and, tragically, dividing communities.

 

It nods to the role Protestant clergy played in the demonisation of their Catholic neighbours (and the hellfire-and-damnation sermon rings absolutely true for this daughter of an evangelical minister).

 

No, it is not some sort of Ken Loach take on Northern Ireland, but I suggest that, if it was, it would have fewer viewers overall, with the potential for less education of more general and less obviously politicised audiences. Perhaps some will actually go and read TA Jackson’s Ireland Her Own after seeing this?

 

Wikipedia describes it as a “comedy-drama”, but while there are some laughs, I think this completely downplays what Branagh has achieved. The Troubles are still raw – see Brexit and the Good Friday Agreement – and I think that this opens up the possibility for a wider audience to perhaps see it differently.

 

Plus, sectarianism and bigotry is as big a problem as ever, across the world. Just as Taika Waititi’s 2019 comedy-drama Jojo Rabbit viewed Nazism from a child’s perspective, and pointed up how children are taught – groomed – into intolerance, so this views the situation in Northern Ireland through a child’s eyes. Yet in avoiding adult sophistication, it makes similar points very clearly. And one could add that, for many English audiences in particular, it might be a slight surprise to see who the thugs are.

 

But back to this film. The cinematography from Haris Zambarloukos is wonderful. The use of music from Van Morrison works perfectly, the decisions on the use of occasional colour are interesting and Branagh’s use of pop cultural references works well.

 

On the performances, there is not a bad one to be seen, but perhaps the big plaudits go to Hill who is remarkable in the central role, and Balfe, who gives a powerhouse turn. Hinds and Dench offer the sort of support grounded in their vast experience and abilities that one would expect.

 

All in all, very much worth seeing.

This way something clever comes

For many of us, if we were not streaming much before the pandemic, that has changed since COVID-19 invaded and changed all our lives.

The Other Half and I, for instance, had one streaming service beforehand (Amazon, as a by-product of other things) and now we have ... well, at least three more than I’m aware of, all of which are for the screening of films or TV and not as a by-product of lower delivery charges.

In general terms, I’d say they’re pretty good value, but it strikes me that, in terms of cinema, that they could be seen as a very positive development.

Between 2016 and the start of the pandemic, the OH and I had developed a big cinema-going habit. For instance, we managed 21 cinema visits in 2018, with 19 the following year.

Of course, 2020 was the first year of the pandemic and we managed just five, of which Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (which we’ve seen in two different National Theatre stage productions) we streamed just before Christmas that year, which came at additional cost, since we'd just lost our wifi service after a big blow-out that lasted into February, and streamed it, therefore, by linking a 4G phone to the TV.

Last year, remarkably – and in spite of the very best efforts of COVID – we managed 12 cinema visits and one streaming of a just-released film (Green Knight, which was on nowhere near us in sensible terms).

The cinema has felt the safest place we can visit, because we can walk to and from our local, and it’s not difficult to choose screenings at the multi-screen cinema we regularly visit that have few people in attendance.

For instance, on my birthday late last year – Saturday 11 December – we went to see Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story on our nearest Vue’s biggest screen, with approximately 30 people occupying the 430 seats. How safe can you feel these days, in an indoor space, outside your home? We felt perfectly safe that afternoon.

 

But streaming has also meant that we have caught films that we might not have pencilled in for cinema attendance. Just over a week ago, with Ormicron case numbers finally falling in London, we saw Spider-Man: No Way Home at the cinema. And thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

The day after, we got around to streaming Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.

Wow. Just wow. I’m not sure that, even in a pandemic-free world, I’d have gone to a cinema to see that (which rather makes a fool of me), but a paid-for streaming service ensures that (presumably) the producers get a cut of the takings, rather earlier and presumably at a greater level than if one had to wait a year or more to watch it at home.

And presumably such a mixed release also increases the number of people who see the film.

 

But back to The Power of the Dog specifically. It is a simply stunning film: performances, visuals, music, themes ... all utterly superb. Over a week later, I simply can’t get it out of my head.

 

And similarly today, when the OH and I watched the Apple TV+-produced The Tragedy of Macbeth.

 

It has had a limited cinema release – however minimum a cinema release, that is what is needed in order to ensure that a film qualifies to be considered for the Oscars – but it’s mainstream release was, in effect, on Apple TV+ on Friday and we had signed up to AppleTV+ primarily because we wanted to see it.

 

This is another superb film. I have seen some comments suggesting that the two central performances are somehow ‘underplayed’. These seem to be put about by people who apparently imagine that Shakespeare must be performed in an histrionic manner and can’t imagine it not being so.

 

I’ve seen at least five stage productions, reviewing at least three (one in Spanish) and on that basis, I’ll dare to suggest that I have a clue.

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the Macbeths are simply superb. These are controlled performances – no hysterics, sure, but the control helps ensure that the descent into madness in both of them is utterly believable.

And Kathryn Hunter as the trio of witches is creepy beyond belief.

The cinematography – it was shot entirely on stage, entirely in B&W – is simply stunning. This is a visual masterclass. Some have suggested that it echoes Fritz Lang, but it’s much more a case of being influenced by German Expressionist cinema in general, with a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, plus a big dollop of the lonely, alienating nature of the paintings of Giorgio de Chrico.

The reality is that Joel Coen has created possibly the finest cinematic telling yet of Macbeth – and yes, that includes Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood – while having to work in a world where the cinema was not, physically, easy. And streaming almost certainly means that more people will view the film now, early in its release, than would have done so if its release was limited to a few cinemas, as many ‘arthouse’ films are.

We will only really find out in time how this all pans out, but perhaps streaming and cinema can live alongside each and, indeed, actually benefit each other. I very much hope so.