Mark Reviews Movies: BLACK '47

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 11, 2018

By the end of the Great Famine in Ireland, the population of the land, then wholly part of the United Kingdom, decreased by a quarter, either by death or emigration. A blight struck the potatoes in 1845. It was the only crop that could sustain a family, considering the small land holdings the Irish were allowed by their British—either native or loyalist—landlords. Basically, everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and there was no help coming from the empire that held control on the land, even though they were more than happy to take Irish recruits into their military for an ongoing war in the Middle East and Southern Asia.

1847 marked the worst year of what most people outside of Ireland know as the Potato Famine, and that's the year in which Black '47 is set. The movie, co-written and directed by Lance Daly, begins as a drama about a returning army veteran, who arrives to discover that his entire family has died as a result of the famine.

His mother starved to death, refusing to take soup from visiting Protestant missionaries, looking to increase their religious flock and strike a blow to the Catholic Church, which dominated Ireland, off the desperation of poor, hungry people. His brother was hanged after stabbing a police officer as the brother's family was being evicted from their home.

Feeney (James Frecheville) is angry, to say the least, although you'd never know it, given his stoic attitude. He fought on the side of the British in Afghanistan, and his thanks is to return to a homeland devastated by, as well as a home that no longer exists because of, the terrible policies and general apathy of the empire he served. It is, perhaps, inevitable that the setup of this story will result in violent, bloody ends. It will only take one more injustice, one more series of death, and one more reminder that, as an Irishman, Feeney is living in a place that should be home. Instead, it is hostile to his very existence.

The anger and eventual reprisal of this revenge story is understandable and probably warranted, especially given the circumstances of Feeney's past and present. What's intriguing about Daly's approach, though, is how restrained it is.

We've seen this particular tale—of a wronged man who sets out to avenge those wrongs with targeted violence—too many times to recall just how many. Like its protagonist, a man of few words and fewer facial expressions, the movie never voices its outrage for the various factors that led to and exacerbated this tragic period of Irish history. While still detailing what went wrong and how the situation became worse, the filmmakers let the protagonist's musket and blade summarize that sentiment of rage.

One almost appreciates that Daly and his fellow screenwriters (P.J. Dillon, Pierce Ryan, and Eugene O'Brien) avoid some staid, miserabilist drama about this historical event, which seems like the most obvious way to dramatize a record of it. In evading one obvious approach, though, the filmmakers have settled into another one.

This may be a slightly different tonal approach to a revenge tale, with a unique historical setting. It is still, though, a rather familiar story, filled in with a hero who's rudimentary, other characters who are primarily targets, and a secondary protagonist, with conflicted thoughts and feelings about the hero's actions, who's given more weight than the hero himself.

The story begins with Feeney's return to his native region of Ireland, discovering that the only family members who have survived his absence are his sister-in-law (played by Sarah Greene) and her children. Shortly later, they are dead, leaving Feeney to seek vengeance against those who killed or whose actions resulted in the deaths of his entire family.

Meanwhile, Hannah (Hugo Weaving, very good as a man whose conscience slowly gets the better of his official loyalty), a British police investigator and army veteran who served with Feeney, avoids a trial for murdering a suspect by volunteering to track down his former comrade, who has begun his bloody revenge. Accompanying Hannah are Pope (Freddie Fox), a ruthless army captain who hates the Irish, and Hobson (Barry Keoghan), a wet-behind-the-ears soldier who possesses some sympathy for the plight of the Irish. Later, the three enlist the help of Conneely (Stephen Rea), who lives in the area, as a translator for those who refuse or don't know how to speak English.

There is, unfortunately, little more to say about the story itself, except that, while the plot follows its well-worn path of revenge and the chase, it also illuminates the political dynamics and climate of Ireland at the time. Feeney's targets run the gamut of contemporary British villains, from the local constables, to a harsh judge, to religious leaders on both sides of the Catholic-Protestant conflict, and, finally, to Lord Kilmichael (Jim Broadbent), an aristocrat and local landlord who thrives while starving Irish people stand outside the gates of his estate, begging for any scrap of food.

In a way, such historical and political details are almost enough to elevate the material beyond its roots as a typical sort of revenge thriller. Those roots are firmly planted, though, meaning Black '47 ultimately is too stuck in its ways to give us anything more than a violent, formulaic history lesson.

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