Mark Reviews Movies: BELFAST

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 11, 2021

Writer/director Kenneth Branagh likely had to present his Belfast in black-and-white. Otherwise, the rose tinting of the story might have bled into the image itself.

That's not to say the filmmaker's newest is absent of conflict or melancholy or uncertainty. The story here is set in 1969, within a quaint neighborhood of the eponymous city, just as the Troubles of Northern Ireland are about to overtake the region for another three decades. That story is clearly autobiographical to one degree or another. After all, Branagh was born in Belfast in 1960 and the ending of this story, which follows a 9-year-old boy and his family with the rising turmoil in the backdrop (and, occasionally, in the foreground), matches the conclusion of the filmmaker's own youth.

We mainly see these events from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), who more or less understands that something isn't right in his previously quiet corner of the world. He's also—and mostly—starting to notice girls (one girl, in particular), worrying about his grades, dreaming of becoming a soccer player, playing in the street and alley, spending time with his extended family, and especially enjoying excursions to the cinema and the theater.

The movie opens and ends with shots of modern-day Belfast in full and vibrant color, and we don't miss that Buddy's trips to the movies and a live theatrical production show the images on screen and the actors on stage in color, as well. Why the adventures of a flying car and Raquel Welch in a skimpy fur getup seem to be given more weight for the protagonist than the domestic problems in the boy's house and the mounting violence just outside his door are a bit of mystery. They're an escape, yes, but aside from an opening scene of violence on Buddy's block and another in which he's taken hostage by a local gangster, the kid's life doesn't seem in much need of that kind of fantastical escape.

Most of the problems are revealed by way of scenes that Buddy either doesn't quite notice or doesn't fully comprehend. We first see the boy playing with other kids on his block in August of this pivotal year for him and Northern Ireland as a whole. Everybody knows everyone else in the neighborhood, and there's an amusing game of telephone, as kids and adults pass along that it's time for Buddy to go home. His Ma (Caitríona Balfe) has tea prepared, but all the innocent hustle is interrupted by a bustling mob.

This area houses both Protestants—of which Buddy's family is—and Catholics, and the mob of Protestants wants the Catholics out of here. Windows are smashed. Rocks are thrown at people (Ma heroically uses a garbage can lid to block them from her son). A car's gas tank is set ablaze and rolled down the street. In the aftermath, the neighborhood cleans up and erects a makeshift barricade to protect themselves and each other.

Buddy's Pa (Jamie Dornan), a construction worker who does a lot of temporary work in London, returns, is threatened by local Protestant rabble-rouser Billy (Colin Morgan), and starts to think of a way to get his family out of the country. He'd have to leave his parents, Pop (Ciarán Hinds) and Granny (Judi Dench), behind, but they understand. Buddy, obviously, doesn't.

Branagh, of course, is having it both ways here. He's giving us the wide-eyed naïveté of Buddy's point of view, in which the boy can't comprehend any way or reason to distinguish a Protestant from a Catholic, keeps playing and trying to find a way to talk to his crush Catherine (Olive Tennant), and proudly announces to his mother, after being pulled into a riot by his rebellious cousin Moira (Lara McDonnell), that he has looted some laundry detergent. To teach her son a lesson in a most incomprehensible manner for a woman who's terrified that Buddy and his brother Will (Lewis McAskie) might be shot dead around the corner, Ma drags her younger son back to mob, resulting in both of them being taken hostage. Pa arrives, like some hero in one of the Westerns Buddy watches on TV, and responds with similar bravery.

Such odd moments of parenting and such larger-than-life heroism might only exist in the innocent eyes of a child, but Branagh doesn't leave the narrative within that realm. It's also about very real and very un-childish concerns—such as rampant unemployment, back taxes, religious and ethnic prejudice, feeling like a stranger in one's own home, illness, and the constant fear of violence—as seen clearly from the adult characters' perspectives.

We see these scenes play out, with sincere significance and with Buddy absent from or only catching parts of them, and as a result, there's a wide gap of tone and approach between these two severely different perspectives. Branagh never quite marries the two in a cohesive way. In this constant back-and-forth between youthful ignorance and adult awareness, the movie keeps whatever emotional grounding it's trying to achieve at a distance.

There are, undoubtedly, some lovely and genuinely touching moments in Belfast (Hinds and Dench accomplish a lot with relatively little as the adoring and adorable grandparents, and Hill is a natural). The particular moments here aren't the problem, though. It's the lack of a sense of a unified whole of tone and narrative.

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