I have long been a fan of the work of actor/director Kenneth Branagh. His film version of Hamlet is my personal favorite, and I think his MCU movie Thor might be a little underrated. True, not everything he’s done has worked–last year’s Artemis Fowl was as dull as wallpaper paste–but I have liked more of the movies he’s made than disliked them, and now his semi-autobiographical love letter to the city of his birth, Belfast, is out. Shot mostly in black-and-white, he was at least going for a more artistic look to hopefully go with a more artistic film.
Movies like this are generally only at the AMC for a week at best, so my only real chance was to see it this weekend. That, I was able to do.
The film opens on a playful Belfast street in what looks like a very friendly neighborhood. It’s August in 1969, and before long, a masked mob shows up to smash and threaten the houses of the Catholic residents in this mixed street. Buddy (newcomer Jude Hill) is carried home by his panicked Ma (Caitriona Baife) to hide until it’s over along with Buddy’s older brother Will (Lewis McAskie). Buddy’s Pa (Jamie Dornan) is a tradesman who works in England, only returning home every other weekend, leaving Buddy to mostly be taken care of by his mother alone. Pa has some sort of back taxes issue, and though he is good with his hands like his own father, Buddy’s Pop (Ciaran Hinds), the unemployment issues in Belfast force him to work in England for extended periods. With the Troubles gearing up, Pa wants to move the family to England. Ma doesn’t want to leave the city she has spent her whole life where she knows everyone and has a large extended family. Though Buddy’s family are Protestant, they don’t really have any issues with the Catholics even as other, often more violent people keep insisting they should. Whether or not the family stays or leaves is the movie’s central conflict, but while it is an important part of the movie, it is also arguably not the film’s main purpose.
Indeed, this is a slice of Buddy’s life from August of 1969 to March of the following year as Buddy romances a girl in his class, tries to figure out which of two roads leads to Hell as a Minister had described in a particularly fiery sermon, and goes to the movies. Buddy loves the movies, and the film’s only instances of full color–aside from some shots of the modern Belfast to start and end the film–occur when Buddy is out to such things, showing some old movies as well as a live theater production in full color while keeping everything else in black and white, an interesting color choice since one of the main themes seem to be that the city’s moral situation is hardly a black-and-white one. We also get a number of scenes involving Buddy’s grandparents. Pop and Granny (Judi Dench) have some rather delightful moments together as Pop putters around his house and continues to flirt with Granny and she gives somewhat bemused responses to her husband’s general behavior and overall refusal to get some medical issues checked out. Since the movie is basically about Buddy, he’s in almost every scene of the movie, even if it’s just sitting off to the side somewhere and listening to other characters conversations. The only scenes where I couldn’t spot him all involved his grandparents, and they were a rather adorable couple.
Ultimately, the movie is about whether or not the family should leave Belfast. Is going somewhere unfamiliar but safe worth it if you are leaving behind so many friends, loved ones, and general familiarity? Even if the unfamiliar place, where people might be hostile to the Irish in general offers more financial security than Belfast can hope to offer? That’s the question at the center of Belfast, showing how the city itself is a part of young Buddy’s life even as other forces are pushing the family to pick sides and participate in general unrest. Buddy, for one, has to deal with an older cousin who insists Buddy join the gang she belongs to whether he wants to or not. But then there’s the sweeter side, such as Pop offering Buddy tips on how to pass a math test and talk to the girl he likes, advice Granny in the next room usually scoffs at.
In many ways, its a sweet movie with a bittersweet ending. The final moments are not exactly a surprise to anyone who knows anything about Belfast’s history, but Branagh frames it well, establishing the characters of Ma, Buddy, and Pa sufficiently while making it clear that none of them really want to leave even as the movie has a moment where it suggests that the Irish were a people made for leaving and going elsewhere because how else could they miss the people left behind? It’s a lovely story told with affection, and a nice tribute to a city that, despite the times, was still home to a lot of people just trying to get by.
Grade: A
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