Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 1 hour, 38 minutes
Director/Writer: Kenneth Branagh
Quick Impressions:
Two questions gnawed at me as I watched this film.
1) Is Kenneth Branagh teasing that he’s going to make a third Hercule Poirot film based on Agatha Christie’s Hallowe’en Party? (My mom used to watch the one starring David Suchet and Zoë Wanamaker at least ten times every fall. It was very weird not to have it playing in the background of my life this year.) I noticed that novel in one scene, and in another scene, Buddy (whose life is based on Branagh’s) is reading a Thor comic. So I could not help wondering.
2) Who is that actor playing Billy Clanton? (For a second he looked vaguely like Benedict Cumberbatch, and I asked myself, “Do I just think that because Cumberbatch played Dr. Strange, and that beard makes him look like a wizard?”) I never placed him until I got home and looked. It’s Colin Morgan! Merlin from the BBC America show Merlin that our family used to devour with glee. (It’s hard to find something everyone likes. For a while, we were really into that show, especially the way they were always gaslighting Morgana, trying to convince her she was just having bad dreams. She and Uther had such an entertaining dynamic—like when he gave her a hug and she frantically waved away the assassins coming to kill him!) I forgot all about Colin Morgan! I’m thrilled it’s him. I can’t wait to tell my husband. I wish I could tell my mom!
Setting those small (but nagging) concerns aside, I’ll say I’ve been so excited to see Belfast. Not only is it a serious contender for Best Picture, but it’s also written and directed by Kenneth Branagh whose movies I always like. (Some are far stronger than others in terms of how they appeal to general audiences, but just about everything he’s done appeals to me.) I’m also a big fan of Judi Dench, and I’d love to learn more about the conflict in Northern Ireland. (Most of what I know now is the by product of a teenaged obsession with Bono and doesn’t amount to much.)
Heading into the film, though, I felt a curious crushing sadness (unrelated to the movie). That didn’t improve as I watched Belfast. It’s a beautiful film, but it probably won’t alleviate any feelings of wistful, nostalgic sorrow you bring in with you.
The Good:
I’ve seen ads for Belfast comparing it to Roma, but I don’t find the two films to be alike at all. I mean, sure they’re superficially alike. Both are in black-and-white, set in the past (in the same era), and focus on life in the neighborhood where the writer/director grew up. Both involve rioting and violence. Both focus on family. Both show the characters going to the movies. As I list them now, I think, Wow, that’s a lot of similarities, actually.
The thing is, the experience of watching the two films felt so different to me.
Maybe it’s because I’m not a native Spanish speaker, but when I watched Roma, I noticed such pervasive and deep visual symbolism. Often the story was advanced by its visuals. And what it was trying to say was so huge and profound. Belfast has snappier dialogue and the music of Van Morrison. It’s a more traditionally told, dialogue heavy, character driven story. It shows us something profound, too—the enduring love for family, the inevitability of change—but it isn’t as big. It’s intimate. Roma gives us the entire ocean, all of eternity. Belfast is about the fate of one little family. Despite numerous similarities on paper, when you watch the two films, they feel different.
I liked Roma (and got highly offended when I kept seeing it suggested online that nobody actually liked Roma. For what possible reason would I pretend to like it?) But Belfast is a shorter, brisker watch with a lot more comedy (no trauma comparable to Roma’s grueling birth scene) and a child protagonist who is the fictional version of the writer/director. (In Roma, Cleo the maid is the central character, not the child watching her.)
More than Roma, Belfast reminds me of To Kill a Mockingbird in that the child protagonist guides the audience through the story with the wisdom of the adult he has become. We only see what is important to the story. A real child wouldn’t necessarily know the significance of the events happening to him. (This one doesn’t either, but when we watch his adventures, we somehow only see terribly significant moments that form not only a coherent narrative but a thoughtful take on the events of the time.)
Young Jude Hill is perfect as Buddy. He’s a conspicuously gifted child actor. Everything he does feels so natural and unaffected, and he seems equally compelling in moments of comedy, peril, and sadness. Without the right child in this role, the movie wouldn’t work. He’s in nearly every scene. If he were wrong for the part, it would ruin the movie. He’s very good when he reacts to the news about moving at Christmas because it’s the only time we see him behave this way, and we’ve seen the slow, thoughtful build up to this explosion of feeling even if his parents haven’t.
Also immensely compelling is Lara McDonnell as Moira. I loved her. (And I remember her as a bright spot in the otherwise pretty disappointing Artemis Fowl movie. I had forgotten Kenneth Branagh directed that. Apparently I lied when I said I liked everything he’s directed. That movie disappointed me so much that I decided not to write a review.) I found myself wanting to know more about Moira, wishing to join her gang (until I saw her gang in action).
The cinematography by Haris Zambarloukos is interesting. I’m always captivated by clever use of windows, doors, reflective surfaces. And I wasn’t expecting the film to incorporate color, but it begins in color. Most of the story is told in black-and-white (to show that we’re in the past, I assume). Yet the movies of the era are in color (even within this film). That almost suggests that Belfast (or at least the community where Buddy lives) is stuck in the past or somehow not in the real world. Usually movies told about someone’s distant childhood in black-and-white don’t take place in 1969. Telling the story in black-and-white makes it seem like he grew up in How Green Was My Valley, and yet he’s doing a project about the moon landing and watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I’m not entirely sure I understand why the film shows us the movies Buddy watches in color, but I love the way Belfast uses High Noon.
Best Action Sequence:
The opening sequence of Belfast is so jarring. (Not the very opening, though that’s jarring, too, because I wasn’t expecting it to be in color.) I mean our introduction to Buddy. One minute he’s innocently playing in a lively, happy neighborhood where everyone seems to know and like everybody else. The next minute, a violent mob appears, chaos ensues, a car is blown up. The incongruity is so pronounced. It made an impression on me, and I was expecting it. What must a nine-year-old child living through such events have made of them? (I guess he grew up and made Belfast.)
Best Scene:
My favorite scene is the arithmetic lesson that Pop (Ciarán Hinds) gives to Buddy. I love Pop’s response to Buddy’s argument that there’s only one right answer. I also like their scene in the hospital when Buddy tells Pop that he wants his grandparents to move with him. (This movie kept making me feel horribly guilty for letting my mother die and depriving my children of her—as if she did it with my permission!)
Best Scene Visually:
The karaoke part is perfect. I suppose it’s odd to call out karaoke as a visual, but Buddy and the audience need to see his parents perform together at this point, just as much as his parents need to perform together. The song ends up being a celebration of life and a confirmation of love. Their body language is so important throughout the film, and seeing them come together here convinced me that they truly loved and needed each other and would remain together no matter what. If this scene were removed, I don’t think the movie would work.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Jamie Dornan):
I remember getting really excited when Jamie Dornan took the part of Christian Grey. That’s entirely because originally Charlie Hunnam was going to play Christian Grey, then dropped out. I had seen Hunnam in a few things, considered him a decent actor, and worried that he might destroy his career if the Fifty Shades franchise turned into a disaster. (I’m a worrier, you see. This seems extremely funny to me at this moment. I felt genuine relief when someone I didn’t know personally whose career I was not invested in at all and whose work I only thought in passing showed potential did not make a possible career mistake. I have no idea why I was invested in this in any way.)
At any rate, that (bizarre and oblique line of thought) is all the thought I’ve devoted to Jamie Dornan until now. He’s good in this, though. What I like best about his performance as Pa is the way we can read his eyes and body language and see when he is and is not afraid. He’s not afraid of neighborhood terrorist Billy Clanton. He is afraid of losing his wife and family.
I’ve heard that Dornan will campaign in supporting actor. I strongly prefer the performance of his co-star Ciarán Hinds, but we’ll see what happens.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Catriona Balfe):
I’ve never watched Outlander, and I thought Catriona Balfe was the weakest part of Ford v Ferrari. (It wasn’t fair of me to think so. The only concrete problem I could identify was that she vaguely looked like Cate Blanchett at times but wasn’t her, which (with some distance) honestly sounds like more of a me problem than a Catriona Balfe problem.)
But I like her a lot in this film, and I see why she’s getting Oscar buzz. In fact, I wish she were in the movie more. Her earnest, impassioned explanation of why she wants to stay in the place that has always been home would make a good Oscar clip. The lines she delivers here are important. Ma (her character) isn’t just being whimsical or fearful of change. She makes a strong case for staying in Belfast, and as she becomes increasingly passionate, she also becomes increasingly logical, making her words seem doubly true.
The moment I like even better, though, comes when Ma marches Buddy back to the store with his box of washing powder. She’s firmly teaching a lesson to Buddy and Moira when her disciplinary rage transitions to confused terror. In this scene, the entire pragmatic, impassioned argument she’s made about staying in Belfast comes completely undone, and you can see it all in Balfe’s eyes.
Initially I was watching trying to compare her to lead actress performances I’ve seen this year (from people like Jessica Chastain and Kristen Stewart). Both dominate their films in a way Balfe does not, but I’m pretty sure she’s actually running in supporting, too, so that shouldn’t matter.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Judi Dench):
That means I should have been comparing her to her co-star (and mother-in-law in the movie) Judi Dench. This is so much more difficult. The problem is, I inordinately love Judi Dench. Plus, practically every time my mother saw her (which was kind of often because Judi Dench is everywhere, even in her grandson’s Tik-Toks), she would say, “Don’t you think she looks like my mother? She reminds me so much of my mother.” She was always a bit wistful when she said it because her mother is dead. And now my mother is dead, too.
I kept a careful eye on Dench’s character in this film, thinking, “If this woman dies, I am not going to be able to handle it.” (I was so worried the film might be setting us up for her surprise death, tricking us with her husband’s worsening illness.)
Bringing all this emotional baggage with me, I found Dench’s scenes even more moving than they would have been to anyone else. I’m extremely fond of her conversation with her husband about her brown stockings. (She and Ciarán Hinds have wonderful chemistry. I loved every one of their scenes together and wanted more.)
I also liked the physicality of Dench’s performance, the way she shows her age (and at moments her grief) in her movements. (And yes, I am aware that Judi Dench is 86, but I still think she’s pretty agile. I just watched her and Branagh give a red carpet interview to confirm this impression).
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Ciarán Hinds):
Hinds gives my favorite performance of the film. If just one person gets an acting nomination, I hope it’s him. He reminded me so much of my own grandpa and brought me my first moment of real joy of not just the film but the entire evening when he advised Buddy to make his handwriting messier as a tactic for getting higher math scores.
Because I’m so Oscar-crazy, I couldn’t help evaluating all the performances, thinking about potential nominees. Only in Hinds’s case did I gradually stop being hyper-aware of the actor and focus entirely on the reality of the character. That’s why I think he gives the best performance. After a while, I was watching Jamie Dornan, Catriona Balfe, Judi Dench, and Pop.
The Negatives:
I didn’t know too much about the Troubles in Northern Ireland before watching the film, and Belfast didn’t particularly enlighten me. Catriona Balfe’s speech to her husband on the bus (about why she wants to stay in Belfast, how they won’t be welcomed in England) did pointedly emphasize that the people living in Northern Ireland were not all violent insurrectionist terrorists. More was going on there than violence. Yes, some Protestants did violently attack Catholics, but not even all the Protestants agreed with the tactics used or even the sentiment of the anti-Catholic attacks. So I suppose the film is saying that though Belfast’s reputation for violence and civil unrest precedes it, the city was so much more than that. Of course, I never actually thought that everyone living in Belfast was some sort of terrorist. There’s violence everywhere. And I know that gossip about the worst aspects of a place does not necessarily give anyone an accurate idea of what it’s like to live there. I mean, I live in Texas! We don’t exactly have a glowing reputation with the rest of the nation, but I love where I live, and I don’t think I embrace a single one of the crazy policies that everyone else seems to assume all Texans espouse. There’s more variety of thought and culture here than people realize, and I’m sure that’s true of everywhere else, too. I do understand why Balfe’s character would fear everyone would assume the worst of them, though.
Despite its many strengths, the film does not teach us much about what was happening in Northern Ireland in 1969. We just learn that in Belfast, some of the Protestants were violently terrorizing the Catholics, trying to run Catholic families out of Protestant neighborhoods. We also learn that some (probably most) Protestants didn’t approve of the behavior of the violent few but many (possibly most) felt powerless to stop them. The film doesn’t have much else to say about these conflicts. Branagh’s family left. The Troubles are a catalyst, but the film is about his family, not the violence that drove them to leave (though Belfast does show brilliantly how even innocent children can quickly get caught up in mob violence).
Also I don’t know why we get so little of Buddy’s older brother Will (Lewis McAskie). My husband and I speculated about this in the car on the way home. Did Kenneth Branagh’s older brother not want to be talked about in the movie? (This was our best guess.) Was he actually just a very boring young man? Was young Kenneth so self-absorbed that he rarely paid attention to his brother? (I doubt those last two guesses are right. Maybe there just wasn’t time to show much about his brother. We don’t know.)
My only other small complaint is that I wouldn’t have minded if the movie were a bit longer so I could spend more time with Granny and Pop. I’m sure Buddy wished he could have spent more time with them, too, so perhaps the movie is perfect as is. (I’m not sure why Granny couldn’t go with them. Couldn’t the boys just continue to double up? My mother would have jumped on the bus with us for sure!)
Honestly, Belfast is a good film, but I did find it crushingly sad throughout. Granted, I was already sad when I started watching, but it constantly made me remember that everyone we love will die, that grandparents are there to be provide additional love and support for children when parents can’t (until they die), that no matter what you choose, you will always lose something, that actually, you’ve probably lost something already (maybe everything!), and…did I mention that everyone will die? Roma had more grueling content (that birth scene!), but despite all its jokes and its adorable lead, Belfast hung over me like a wistful mist of human tears the whole time I watched it.
Overall:
Belfast is an excellent film. I’m not sure why it made me so sad. There’s just such a wistful melancholy to it. But it is a beautiful story about a turning point in writer/director Kenneth Branagh’s childhood and a look at what made his original family home so special.