INSIDE PEACE
THERE’S a time for righting wrongs. There are times to fight battles.
The poet Hafiz, from 14th-century Shiraz, suggested we take an occasional day to “talk about that which disturbs no-one”.
Why? Because it would “bring some peace into those beautiful eyes”. A day when we didn’t complain, didn’t criticise, didn’t try to put things “right”, but appreciated them are they are.
It might not make a difference to anyone else, but it would surely bring some peace to our soul.
REVIEW
SIR Kenneth Branagh has never made a secret of his early life. He grew up in Northern Ireland as the troubles erupted, and left at the age of nine when his working-class Protestant parents made the decision to move the family to England to escape the turmoil.
Yet, this has always seemed like a footnote to his story. With his largely autobiographical drama Belfast, for which he won a richly deserved Best Screenplay award at the Golden Globes earlier this month, he shines a spotlight on it for the first time.
Film trailer –
The result is a warm-hearted, wholly captivating film, firmly rooted in a particular time and place. It is also bewitchingly intimate, and in a way a generic tale – that of refugees through the ages.
From start to finish, it is enchantingly done. It opens with colour shots of modern-day Belfast, accompanied, as the film is throughout, by the music of Van Morrison. As the picture proceeds, it morphs into black and white to show a contented urban scene in August 1969: children playing, neighbours in friendly conversation, a community happy and content with itself, and, a young boy, Buddy – engagingly played by newcomer Jude Hill – slowly making his way home.
And in an instant, everything changes. Rioters appear, hardline Loyalists bent on driving Catholics from the mostly Protestant neighbourhood. Branagh effects a powerful 360-degree shot around the bewildered Buddy as a nasty and violent tumult invades his innocent, carefree boyhood.
Soon there are tanks rolling up Mountcollyer Street, where Buddy lives with his Ma (Caitriona Balfe) and Pa (Jamie Dornan), older brother, Will (Lewis McAskie), and paternal grandparents Granny (Dame Judi Dench) and Pop (Ciaran Hinds).
Not giving actual names to the grown-ups gives a nod to the story’s universality. It allows the viewer to relate on a personal level.
Cleverly, we see something that is especially resonant in our own pandemic-blighted times: a new normal. Family and community life go on as before, but now poisonous sectarianism finds its way into everyday dialogue: “Daddy, are you not going to be a vigilante on our barricade?”
The essence of Belfast is this transition from peace to war in the context of a little boy’s life, and that of his family. A little like John Boorman’s charming Hope and Glory (1987). Some may be inclined to ask whether the ceiling has fallen in on Buddy’s world, except, significantly, it hasn’t.
Buddy has more pressing concerns than men with guns, such as a crush on a girl in his class and a minor shoplifting rap. The bitter strife stirring in the streets isn’t even the biggest headache for his parents; there’s an onerous tax bill to pay and growing evidence that Pop’s lungs are giving out.
The relationship between Buddy and Pop is depicted with irresistible tenderness and humour. “There’s nothing wrong with an outside toilet,” says the old man, “except on an aeroplane.”
Hinds plays Pop wonderfully, but it will likely be Dench’s performance that moves you to tears, as Granny comes to terms with Ma and Pa’s painfully conflicted decision to uproot themselves.
Dornan is terrific, too; and Balfe, beguilingly bonny even when her character is in despair, will surely be in contention to lift a statuette or two before awards seasons is done.
The seam of sentimentality that runs through the picture might be too much for some people. But it will take a hardened and stony heart not to embrace it, or to balk at the occasional whimsical flourishes, such as a High Noon-style stand-off between Pa and the Loyalist thugs trying to recruit him.
It is a very enjoyable film. Van Morrison’s mostly original score is great: Branagh contrives a nice homage by having Pa back a horse called Moondance and the decision to shoot in monochrome is a masterstroke. Not least, because when the family go to the pictures, for instance to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the screen is fleetingly suffused in colour.
The cinematography presented in Belfast is a charming and effective way to show how the cinema enriches lives lived, especially back then, in shades of grey and monochrome film.
Another joy and key feature of Belfast is its brevity: just a little over ninety minutes running time.
Verdict: A small masterpiece ★★★★★
THE IMPACT OF AFFECTION
IN J.M. Barrie’s “Auld Licht Idylls” we encounter the character Cree. He’s a poor man, a hard worker, and his mother’s only support.
When he leaves town for a while, his mother takes her scribbled attempts at a letter to the school teacher for him to tidy up.
The teacher is surprised by how many endearing terms are in it, because he has never heard such words ever exchanged between them.
It turns out Cree has been teaching her to write and made up a sheet of phrases for her to practise with.
There are everyday words and statements like “the peats is near done”, but there are a number of disproportionate phrases like “God watch over me Cree”, “Oh, my beloved son”, “Dear son Cree” and “Loving mother”.
In teaching her to write, he was also – perhaps without realising it – teaching her how he wished he had been loved.
Our actions might be the best way of displaying our feelings, but there’s a place in our soul that longs to hear these things.
Don’t let your words of affection go unsaid.
– J M Barrie was a Scottish writer and journalist
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