Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Kenneth Branagh’s latest film as a writer and director is Belfast, set in, checks notes, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1969, and while it’s not autobiographical, it’s certainly drawing heavily from his own experience as a lad during the “Troubles”, surely the most British way to describe what’s effectively a civil war.
It’s told through the eyes of Jude Hill’s Buddy, a nine year old in a working class Protestant family. His father, Jamie Dornan’s “Pa” works in the building trade in England to pay off a swingeing tax bill, leaving his wife, Caitríona Balfe’s “Ma” to raise Buddy and elder brother, Lewis McAskie’s Will, variously helped or hindered by Judi Dench’s “Granny” and Ciarán Hinds’s “Pop”, Buddy’s grandfather.
For a while at least, Buddy’s life and worries seem broadly in line with what you’d expect of a kid of his age – getting swept up in his friend Lara McDonnell’s Moira petty sweet shop theft schemes, struggling with his studies, being alternately bored and terrified by ranting preachers, and trying to get his crush, Olive Tennant’s Catherine to notice him, all of which is very charmingly told.
Less charming, of course, is rampant sectarianism, as a bunch of knuckle-dragging jackasses decide that Catholics are no longer welcome in majority Protestant areas and start to enforce that through violence, here mostly embodied though Colin Morgan’s Billy Clanton, who seeks to involve Buddy’s father in the violence.
This is a fault-line through which the other problems working class, poorer families of the era and location must struggle with, be that poor health, lack of prospects, or the heavy handed authority of the British Army that’s drafted in to police the place, doing as sensitive a job of it as you’d expect from the British Army in that sort of role, leading to the family’s decision to leave Belfast, as so many others did.
While there no shortage of darker themes and moments in Belfast, the framing of it through Buddy’s experience makes for a perhaps surprisingly upbeat and very funny movie, while not minimising or excusing the behaviour of those involved, which is a pretty delicate balancing act which Branagh has made look easy.
Just about the only thing Belfast does that I’m not a massive fan of is the occasional use of colour in what’s otherwise a black and white presentation – I get the intent, but it such an unsubtle technique in an otherwise subtle story that it’s jarring rather than charming. Could also have done without Van Morrison’s stylings, though, given his recent behaviour, but hindsight’s 20/20 I suppose.
That colour niggle aside, it looks great, has a clutch of great actors acting greatly, has charm to spare and is a funny, warm, empathetic look at a period that I feel really ought to come under more examination.