A semi-autobiographical film that chronicles the life of a working-class family and their young son’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s in the Northern Ireland capital.
“Belfast” is an autobiographical account of Kenneth Branagh’s early life when he lived in the titular city as a child. At age nine, he moved with his family to Reading, Berkshire, in England, to escape the Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland between the Protestants, who desired the province to remain part of the United Kingdom, and the Catholics, who wanted Northern Ireland to become part of the Republic of Ireland.
While the Troubles have been depicted in many films over the years, Branagh’s account comes from his own life, living in Belfast before he and his family moved to England. It is filled with the drama you would associate with a story of this ilk but he also adds moments of levity and lightheartedness, elements much needed for a story such as this.
Interestingly, Branagh does away with the conventional three-act structure that most movies adhere to and delivers a narrative that simply allows its audience to follow the central protagonists from day to day, almost as if we were a fly on the wall, observing, and participating in their everyday lives. There is no beginning, we are simply inserted into the nucleus of their existence and extracted by the film’s end.
We are introduced to Ma and Pa (Caitríona Balfe and Jamie Dornan), their two sons, Buddy and Will (Jude Hill and Lewis McAskie), and the boys’ grandparents, Pop and Granny (Ciarán Hinds and Judi Dench). They are a working-class Protestant family who lives in a suburb of Belfast, surrounded by Protestant and Catholic neighbors, who all know and care for each other. When the overwhelmingly Protestant unionists decide that they want all Catholics out of their area, they riot, causing damage to both property and people alike, stating they will return to do away with all Catholics.
Pa works in England in construction and comes home every few weeks to see his family. After returning one weekend, he is told by the local unionists he either joins them to help rid the area of all Catholics, or he will face consequences. He refuses, stating they are all friends and is then given a final warning. When a full-time position with his company opens up in England, he informs his wife but she refuses to leave as Belfast is her home and she knows nothing else but home.
After the family gets caught up in a destructive riot, barely escaping with their lives, Ma realizes there is no future for them, especially her boys, amongst the violence and bloodshed, and they make the agonizing and heart-wrenching decision to leave Belfast behind, never to return.
In many films, there are standout performances but here, the entire cast works in unison to deliver all-inclusive excellent performances as a combined unit. They all play wonderfully off each other and it is rare to find an ensemble of such fascinating actors working so well together. While Branagh directs, it almost feels like he just set the camera up and let his actors do their thing, all of their characteristics and personalities feel genuinely authentic and in no way “prepared,” another rarity in an ever-expanding celluloid market.
In the end, you will either like or dislike “Belfast, there is no middle ground. While some people have said you could take the backdrop and place it in any number of different countries around the globe that have dealt with internal conflicts, such as South Africa, Israel and Palestine, or Sri Lanka and Cyprus, this story is strictly Irish. Its narrative, the people and their interactions with each other, the locales, everything is unequivocally Irish. I was personally able to relate to many of the characters, especially Jamie Dornan whose Pa wants out of Belfast so he can give his family a chance at a better life (much like I did when I left Ireland in 1994) but Caitriona Balfe’s Ma doesn’t want to hear it, she was born and raised in Belfast and it scares her to think about leaving her family and friends. It’s only when she inadvertently becomes embroiled in a violent disturbance on the street that nearly takes her life and the lives of her family, that she realizes it’s time to do the right thing and make the move.
“Belfast” is shot in beautiful black and white and perfectly captures the discord that quickly seeped into Northern Ireland in the late 1960s, dividing Catholics and Protestants after separating the United Kingdom and Ireland into two self-governing polities. The execution of the sectarian tension and violence is brutal but then again it has to be, to show audiences just how merciless things were back then. Amid all the onscreen mayhem, Branagh manages to infuse the film with a few scenes of playful innocence as the youngest in the family, Buddy, discovers true love and the magical escape of the movies. All in all, “Belfast” is a film I would highly recommend, especially for those unfamiliar with the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
In Theaters Friday, November 12th
