‘Belfast‘, Kenneth Branagh‘s film, brings to the screen the story of one of those places which were and are too many on our planet. A place where families lived together for a long time sharing joys and challenges, where children grew up together, teenagers fell in love and adults greeted each other, chatted and helped each other even though the churches they prayed to or the languages they spoke at home were different. A place where the accumulation of nationalist or religious tensions fractured the social fabric and turned yesterday’s neighbors into enemies. It happens today and we see the tragedies every night on the news. It happened for three decades in Northern Ireland during the period in history that is now called the ‘Troubles’. ‘Belfast‘ returns to 1969, the year of the outbreak of incidents, the deterioration of human relations and the first outbreaks of violence in Northern Ireland. For Kenneth Branagh, who is also the author of the screenplay, this is a film with obvious autobiographical overtones. Buddy, the hero of the film, is a nine-year-old boy, exactly the age of Branagh in the year his family decided to leave Belfast in flames and start a new life in England. ‘Belfast‘ has not only the privilege of being told from the perspective of a child, but also the historical advantage of describing a conflict resolved through one of those agreements between enemies that seemed impossible during its peak times, an agreement that is maintained over two decades despite all the pessimistic predictions and historical upheavals. Can violence be attenuated or offset by nostalgia in such an account of a complex historical period? Kenneth Branagh largely manages to avoid the pitfalls and provide a positive response.
The opening scene of ‘Belfast’ is very similar to the beginning of another film competing for this year’s Academy Awards – Spielberg’s ‘West Side Story’. A street with simple people who seem happy with their lives. Neighbors know and greet each other cordially and a child plays freely the medieval knights using the lid of a trash can as a shield. However, the threat is at the edge of the street and violence is taking over the landscape, when a gang of Protestant extremists appears separating the Catholic ‘enemies’, terrorizing them, destroying their cars, shops, homes. The mother of the child who plays the knight saves him from violence and the play shield becomes the item to save their lives. The kid is Buddy and from his perspective the whole story is told. The family is not even Catholic, they are just moderate Protestants who do not divide the world into friends and enemies according to the way they pray to God. Sometimes this posture is more difficult. The father works in England, the mother raises the two boys practically alone, with heroism and dedication, but the violence around them increases, including the pressure to take a militant position in an absurd conflict, because otherwise … The child attends his parents’ discussions , is part of their dilemma to leave the city and neighborhood where they have lived all their lives, to go into exile in England or even further afield, in Canada or Australia. From his point of view, the parents are heroes, and that’s how they look and behave, dedicated and doing their best to protect their children and raise them as good human beings. Much of the film transports us as in a time capsule into the lives of these ‘ordinary’ people trying to live decently in a troubled time, with all the meanings of the word ‘decently’. The kids play and adults dance scenes, and especially those in the cinema are each anthology pieces.
Kenneth Branagh proves in this very personal film that he can combine sensitivity and involvement with talent and perfect mastery of the secrets of the profession. In addition to the story itself, something or many interesting things are always happening on the screen. The cameras do pirouettes, follow the heroes, go down to the height of the boy who tells the story or rise above the roofs to put the action in context. Most of the film is black and white, with a Belfast filmed with love under the oppressive sky which seems permanently invaded by threatening clouds, but from time to time sequences or just spots of color mark feelings and moments of escapism. Like many of the directors who are also actors, Branagh manages to bring out the best of the talent of the actors he works with and makes them involve in the roles and blend into them. Caitriona Balfe creates one of the feminine roles that has impressed me the most lately. Jude Hill is great as thr storyteller. Seeing him, I wonder if anyone has ever thought of an Academy Award category for children’s actors. Jude Hill would probably win the statuette this year. Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds also create a memorable couple in the role of grandparents and the final frame with the actress will not be forgotten for a long time by those who saw the film. There are also a few moments of failure – a completely missed key scene, dialogues sometimes so rhetorical that sound like sermons for the obvious – but these only diminish to a small extent the strong impression that this film left on me. Describing a personal experience, dealing with a conflict that, at least for the moment, is extinguished, Kenneth Branagh alleviated the nightmare with the innocent perspective of a child growing up in the middle of a conflict zone and looking nostalgically at childhood, bringing back the shadows of his parents and grandparents. ‘Belfast‘ is a film that, although set in a well-defined place and time, is painfully universal and actual.