BELFAST has been brewing in Kenneth Branagh’s brain for half a century and now splashes onto the cinema screen in brilliant black and white and rose coloured hues.
With a title like BELFAST, you could expect a baleful film, a gloomy reenactment of all that was bad about the Troubles, but here is a child’s eye view, in which the humour and warmth and passion in working class family daily life is charmingly rendered and evocatively brought to light.
Redolent of John Boorman’s Hope & Glory, BELFAST is the fully fleshed out first chapter of Branagh’s book, Beginning. Branagh’s alter ego in the film is nine year old Buddy played with cheeky, cherubic charm by Jude Hill. This young chap is embedded, embroiled and emboldened by his vast network of relationships – his mother, father, paternal grandparents, neighbours. The streets are his playground, his home his castle.
Dad is employed in England as a joiner – there’s a joke pun in the picture about him not being a joiner when it comes to sectarian affiliation – and flies back every other Friday night or so. His absence seems to coincide with the escalation of the Troubles, a worrying time for his mother to be bringing up two boys on her own most of the time. The rising tide of street violence threatens their relatively idyllic lives and Dad seriously considers emigration.
The Troubles are a dark lining on a silver cloud, as we follow Buddy’s adventures in shoplifting, school, and discovering cinema. BELFAST revels in recreating trips to the flicks to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the deliciously absurd One Million Years BC with the bear skin bikini wearing Raquel Welch.
Buddy is an avid reader of comics, and as a wink and a nod to Branagh’s later film directing career, it seems Thor is his favourite. There’s a trip to the theatre to see A Christmas Carol, the late John Sessions giving his final performance as the Belfast stage actor Joseph Tomelty playing Marley’s ghost.
Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds are wonderful as Buddy’s grandparents, and Jamie Dornan is terrific as Dad, but it’s Caitriona Balfe who anchors this film as Mum, a portrayal pivotal to its emotional depth.
Haris Zambarloukos cinematographer of choice since the misbegotten Sleuth shoots to thrill and Van Morrison sings up a storm on the nostalgic soundtrack.
Richard Cotter
