Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” is a love letter to his childhood home, the city where the Titanic was built and dreams, including those of his own family, were shattered.
The semi autobiographical film opens with some pretty pictures of modern Belfast and its art and architecture, almost like a tourism ad. But this is Branagh romantically showcasing our city to the world in high definition, and with good reason too, since many perceive it as a war-torn backwater. As a key holder to the city of Belfast, he’s perfectly pitched to smash those illusions; and I for one thank him for doing so.
After the initial visual city tour, we’re transferred back in time over a wall decorated with a Terry Bradley dockers mural and those who know, know that we’re not far from sailortown, on the north side of the city. With the change in era, we have a change in cinematography too, as the film slips into a soft grey black and white tint which remains throughout the movie, apart from the odd flash of colour.
Branagh’s movies are usually pretty high octane when it comes to set, design and detail. He’s a director who likes to ‘go big or go home’, but in this movie he’s very much done the latter, because, let’s face it, there ain’t nothing too glamorous or opulent about working class Belfast in 1969.
With less than a few minutes scene-setting his childhood community in the terraced streets of north Belfast, we are thrust into the violence and ethnic cleansing of Catholics from Branagh’s own street. We know quite quickly then, that Branagh’s Buddy (a character loosely based on himself and played by newcomer Jude Hill) and his family are ‘Prods’’.
But they’re good prods. And we know that because Buddy’s Ma (Catriona Balfe) and Da (Jamie Dornan) don’t get involved in the early days paramilitary rule which is bubbling up around them and threatening to affect their family.
Some scenes were quite disturbing for my ten year old daughter beside me in the cinema. From rioting and ram raiding shops to intimidation and threats by former friends and neighbours, as well as heavily armed police and soldiers on the streets; but for many her age back then, including me, it was real life.
Sadly I can relate to many of these elements of the story. When I was just six months older than she is now, I watched two IRA gunmen shoot a judge in his car outside my church after mass. I was less than three metres away and had blood on my socks as I took them off to bathe that night. Later, when I was about twelve, I remember a brick crashing and smashing through our living room window to the calls of ‘fenians out!’ while glass shattered all around me, and I sat, stiff as a board, but still on the phone to a teenage love interest called Alistair (who, as a Protestant, won’t have had an inkling of the fear and, bizarrely, the strange shame I felt at that moment).
I’m not sure anyone watching will understand what actually happened in Belfast fifty years ago, or exactly why it did, but the key thing here is that Branagh chose to focus on community and togetherness rather than the violence, division and hate. There is, after all, more that binds us than divides us and we (mostly) know that now.
Among the chaos of conflict, the key storyline is one of familial love - the complicated twists and turns in a marriage bound by financial and other pressures, the tightly bonded relationship between a grandfather and grandson, a first love between that same grandson, Buddy, and his classmate Catherine, and finally, a beautiful enduring love between Granny & Pops, both characters played blindingly by Ciaran Hinds and Dame Judi Dench.
And while there was brilliant and obvious sparking chemistry between Ma and Pa (Balfe and Dornan), it was the poignant and touching love scenes between Ciaran Hinds and Dame Judi Dench where I found the warmth. I recognised that stoic, no-nonsense, tough love chat with a hidden tenderness that my own mother came to embody at times.
Ciaran Hinds’ ‘Pop’ character also shared some warm and fuzzy moments with his grandson Buddy, and both their performances stole the show in this movie. The many best supporting actor nominations are very deserved.
Jamie Dornan, critiqued (unfairly) for his accent in other movies, seems entirely comfortable and totally relaxed in this role - his best yet, in my opinion, and one which will see him catapulted with ease onto all the awards lists.
I can just imagine Branagh and Dornan exchanging a bit of banter on set, and I’ll bet there was no need for coaching or coaxing from the Oscar winning director to Dornan. He nailed this role like no one else could have.
I will also take a wild guess and say Dornan was doubtless very proud to have played the role of a good Belfast father at a time when his own (brilliant) father’s passing will have been heavy on his heart.
Balfe was a perfect wife to Dornan’s Pa. They moved with a synchronicity and spark that is often hard to pinpoint for on screen couples, and she was outstanding in playing quite a range of difficult emotions alongside most of the cast.
The film compounds some truths about Belfast people. The first is that our identity is not binary and the second is that our humour is dark. But we have a huge capacity to love and connect.
Overall, the movie leaves me wanting more. I want to know if Buddy ever got back in touch with Catherine (assuming she was real), and how his grandmother fared alone after her son and his family left for England in the wake of her husband’s death. I want to know what other movies besides Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and old Westerns influenced young Branagh, and I can’t wait to see who his movies inspire and influence. It certainly touched Valentina and I.