Kenneth Branagh’s newest film, Belfast, is first and foremost a deeply personal film, if not an almost entirely auto-biographical one. Set in the eponymous Irish city in the north during the tumultuous late 60s and early 70s, one might immediately imagine a darker political drama centered directly around the events of the Troubles. Films like Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday or Steve McQueen’s Hunger, set during the same general time period, focus directly on tangible events within the political violence of colonialism at the time, like the Bogside Massacre and the hunger strikers at Long Kesh. This stark history provides these films with the background to craft stories with darker and more incendiary tones. On this note, Branagh’s film makes a significant departure.
The film follows Buddy (Jude Hill), a young boy from Belfast who essentially acts as a stand-in for Branagh in his childhood. The film opens with sweeping shots through a tight neighborhood of row houses, immediately revealing a close-knit community defined by the children playing in the streets and adults amiably catching up on the sidewalks. Buddy’s mother (Caitríona Balfe) calls out to him for his tea, and the message is quickly relayed throughout the block until Buddy hears word and begins to head home, still high on the joys of playing knights with the other local children. This opening quickly establishes a genuine goodwill that exists amongst the inhabitants of the neighborhood, even if it is not entirely naturalistic in its construction.
It is here, though, that the harsh political realities so often focused upon in other films are sharply thrust upon their lives. The garbage can lid once used by Buddy as a make-believe shield while playing with friends soon becomes an actual shield for Buddy and his mother, as a violent Protestant Unionist mob makes their way into the neighborhood—throwing rocks, headhunting Catholics, breaking windows, and eventually blowing up a car in the street in an act of brutal intimidation. This harsh cut from the joyous peaks of everyday life in the neighborhood to the vicious action of the political violence seeping in sets the baseline material conditions on which all of the film rests upon, as well as establishing one of the central points of conflict in the film: that Buddy’s family is Protestant, living in an almost entirely Catholic neighborhood. And most of all, they have no interest in choosing sides.
It may seem after this sequence like the film will in fact continue on a path similar to other Troubles films. Yet, instead of living in the tone of conflict and tension, the film focuses on the minutiae of Buddy’s day-to-day life, filled with the many trivial joys and sorrows experienced by a young boy as he grows up. The impending dangers of the political violence that lurks around them instead hangs as an increasingly troubling nuisance that intermittently invades the more prominent coming-of-age like narrative on which the film focuses. It also begins to break down the goodwill of the neighborhood established in the opening scene, even as the people of neighborhood do everything they can to keep it intact. In this regard, Branagh and editor Úna Ní Dhonghaíle construct the film in a way similar to how one might remember one’s own childhood, full of snippets of little mundane moments which might only seem important to someone recalling their own past.
We see Buddy’s struggles with learning math and with wooing his first crush. We see his father’s (Jamie Dornan) struggles with making ends meet and overcoming mounds of debt as an overseas laborer, and the ensuing strains on their marriage. We see Buddy’s grandfather (Ciarán Hinds) battle with health issues (undoubtedly resulting from his own forays as an overseas laborer in the coal mines of England), mixed in with the grandfatherly wisdom he imparts on his grandson and the adorable craic between him and his wife (Judi Dench), such that only a couple multiple decades into a marriage could produce. These central pillars of the film’s plot are progressed through a smattering of memory-sized moments. These intimate moments are then interspersed with ones of conflict and strife, such as the local Unionist leader constantly threatening Buddy’s family to join the anti-Catholic cause or a local girl roping Buddy in on a Protestant attack on a Catholic-owned grocery store.
This plot structure serves to establish Buddy and his family’s love for their neighborhood, even as outside forces attempt to pull them away from the place they love. It is this reality which then acts as the central thematic tenet of the entire film. What Kenneth Branagh is doing is taking a nostalgic look back upon his life as a boy from Belfast and everything that means to him. Admittedly, in his attempt to craft this narrative, Branagh’s filmmaking is not especially spectacular. The only real artistic flourish is the decision to shoot in black and white, which looks nice but is certainly quite mild in this regard. The constant flow of bite-sized moments can at times be a hindrance to the film as well, as some moments which deserve to be lingered in are abandoned much earlier than they should have been. The dialogue is not especially snappy or poignant throughout, and few performances in the film carry much weight, with Hinds and Balfe being perhaps the most noteworthy. Branagh also unfortunately at times engages in some pretty mediocre and heavy-handed attempts at allegory, which end up being so blatant and lacking of subtlety that they fall completely flat. The film as a whole is undoubtedly deeply flawed, and full of cinematic techniques that are most often found in the loose genre of Oscar-bait.
Despite these flaws, Branagh still manages to achieve something legitimately meaningful and heartfelt. Along the way, he creates a story which legitimately feels as if it carries the weight of history—a story which shows how the lives of everyday people are affected by the material conditions that are thrust upon them. It is a reflection of how centuries of colonialism and sectarian violence in combination with the levers of global capitalism determining a place fit only for wealth extraction creates little corners of the world where the only way in which people can survive all in one piece is to leave. Although the film really exists as a personal portrait of childhood, Branagh’s reflection on what this all means to him through the film rests thoroughly on these material and historical realities, even if they lay slightly below the surface. It is Branagh’s meditation on those who are forced to leave—and those who stay behind—which carries a deep emotional weight in the end, as well as the film’s departure from the more bleak depictions found within most historical Irish films, which elevate it above the typical awards season crowd-pleaser.
4/5 STARS