Saturday evening – and what better than catching up with another film? In this case, writer and director Rich Peppiatt’s 2024 Kneecap, about the real-life rise of Belfast’s Irish-language hip-hop trio of that name and starring them as themselves.
It starts in the late 2010s in Northern Ireland/the north of the island of Ireland, where there’s an ongoing political issue of having the Irish language being accorded the same rights as the Scottish and Welsh languages in their respective parts of the UK.
Post-Good Friday, working-class lads Liam and Naoise are essentially estranged from society and living in a world of drugs and raves. As children, they had learned to speak Irish Gaelic from Naoise’s father Arlo, a Republican who then went on the run to avoid arrest, thereby refusing to accept his own parental responsibility.
Liam has been keeping a diary, in Irish, which amounts to a sort of poetry. When he’s arrested by the NI police, having been at a rave, and refuses to answer any questions in English, Irish speaker and music teacher JJ O Dochartaighn is called to translate.
Ó Dochartaighn realises that Liam has real talent and, as a musician himself, invites the lads to his own improvised studio in a garage, where they record a track.
However, even as the trio gains in popularity, it faces real threats from Republican factions, the Northern Irish police and assorted others.
Perhaps surprisingly, the central trio – Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, as themselves, are really excellent, with nice turns from Simone Kirby as Naoise's mother, Dolores, Michael Fassbender as Arlo and Josie Walker as a detective.
Shot in an anarchic fashion, with no shortage of swearing, lots of drug use, plus nudity and sex, it's very good and very funny indeed. Not really my kind of music, but very enjoyable.
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