Post by Dracula on Nov 5, 2021 21:39:37 GMT -5
Belfast(10/30/2021)
I must say, if you had asked me fifteen years ago what direction the career of Kenneth Branagh would be going in during the 2010s I don’t think I could have given you a very accurate prediction. One could say that he fits the mold of the “actor turned director” but he didn’t really become any kind of household name until he started directing projects and casting himself. For much of his early career he was primarily known as “the Shakespeare guy” for his various adaptation of The Bard’s plays, particularly his Henry V and Hamlet, but that’s never really been the full extent of his work. He directed several original screenplays early in his career and even when he was at the height of his Shakespeare phase he was also adapting other literary works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He hasn’t actually made a direct Shakespeare adaptation since 2006’s As You Like It but his directorial career has nonetheless continued to be defined by adaptations like his version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express or his dip into Disney remakes with 2015’s Cinderella. Those were both highly commercial films actually and this guy, who you would think would have nothing but trouble in this era of franchise filmmaking, has been very willing to “play the game” and has kind of inexplicably thrived in the 2010s. This probably isn’t too shocking in retrospect as he has in his own way always been working with “IP” and despite being associated with highbrow source material Branagh has always been a populist at heart with a focus on outreach to the masses. This instinct really went into overdrive when he made the early MCU film Thor and it hasn’t always been the most dignified route to take as he’s attached himself to some rather regrettable projects like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Artemis Fowl but when it comes to simply getting work he’s bigger now than he’s ever been and his most recent project, Belfast has quite a bit of Oscar buzz.
This is actually the first film in over 25 years to not be an adaptation of any kind of IP and appears to actually be a recounting of his own childhood growing up in the titular city of Belfast in the middle of “The Troubles.” Branagh’s surrogate is a nine year old kid named Buddy (Jude Hill) who lives in a Protestant family on a street that a number of Catholics live, making it a bit of a hotbed for sectarian violence. Buddy’s role in all of this is set up from the beginning when we get a shot (one that’s suspiciously similar to a scene in City of God) in which he finds himself caught standing between dueling gangs on Catholics and Protestants about to go at each other: the innocent caught between. His father (Jamie Dornan) does not really take either side in this conflict and just wants the violence over. He’s also very much in debt and can’t find work because of all the violence so he frequently travels to England to find employment. Soon he begins suggesting to his wife (Caitríona Balfe) that the family move there or even to Australia or Canada in order to escape the madness but she loves her city and doesn’t want to separate her children from their grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds), but with the conflict growing ever closer and with the finances getting tighter and tighter they may soon have no choice.
The child at the center of Belfast is named “Buddy” instead of “Kenny” but outside of that Branagh has done pretty much nothing to hide the fact that this movie is extremely autobiographical. The basic facts of Buddy’s life conform exactly to Branagh’s own circumstances in 1969 and the film does add some key scenes to establish Buddy’s burgeoning interest in film and the theater, but beyond that the film isn’t really about him, he’s more of a point of view character looking at his family and his surroundings from a certain perspective of innocence. This sort of “child’s eye view” of conflict is a fairly common trick used by filmmakers a lot in everything from Hope and Glory to Au Revoir Les Enfants and can at times be used to very good effect like in Grave of the Fireflies but all too often it kind of seems like an excuse to kind of ignore adult complexities about a given situation or period of history in favor of a sort of easy coming of age narrative through hard times and I would say that Belfast more often than not falls into that second category.
To put it frankly, I don’t think Buddy or by extension young Branagh had a terribly nuanced or complex understanding of the conflict he was in and that does not make him a terribly useful narrator of this story. On some level this is the point, to show how child resilience can normalize highly abnormal surroundings and continue to be a kid even when Molotov Cocktails are being thrown around them but in many ways this observation strikes me as being rather banal at this point. It certainly doesn’t help that Branagh paints this whole picture with a heavy sheen of nostalgia and gives the film a heavy focus on the importance of family and community bonding in the face of adversity and looks at his own family with some extremely rose colored glasses. Aside from some financial problems and associated stresses neither of his parents are shown to really be flawed in the slightest and every member of his family, to a person, does not express any sort of sympathy for either side of “The Troubles” and shows nothing but disgust for the whole conflict in general. It is entirely possible that the Branagh family really was this sterling paragon of tolerance and understanding, but I would argue that this makes them not terribly representative of the citizens of Belfast in this era or human nature in general and it might have been more interesting if Branagh had ventured a bit further outside his own experience and looked at people with a little more of a nuanced view of the situation.
This isn’t to say there isn’t plenty to like about Belfast because there certainly is. The film was shot in a nice crisp black and white, which was probably a good move. There are brief sections in color, namely some clips from the technicolor films that Buddy attends as well as some bookending footage of the modern city of Belfast which frankly appear to have been added on the behest of the North Irish tourism industry. The film also sports some pretty solid performances from the whole cast. The main kid Jude Hill is pretty good for what the film needs from him and isn’t too annoying despite the film basically making him a paragon of innocence. Jamie Dornan is also pretty good as the father and Caitríona Balfe probably gives the film’s rangiest most “Oscar clip” laden performance, but in a good way. I was also surprised to see Judi Dench here as the family’s grandmother, she feels different here than in other movies and works pretty well. The film’s handful of scenes of violence are mostly well staged, though there is a sort of standoff towards the end that rang pretty false to me. Branagh also chose to give the film a period soundtrack consisting mostly of the early music of Van Morrison, a choice that is perhaps a bit queezy given that singer’s recent foray into COVID conspiracy theories, but I’ve always liked the guy’s music and he is kind of a natural choice to be soundtracking a coming of age movie about North Ireland given both the wistfulness of his songs and the fact that he was one of the few superstars of the era from there. Also kudos for having the self-restraint not to use “Brown Eyed Girl.”
To clarify where I’m coming from, Belfast was the winner of the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is an award that tends to align with a certain kind of uplifting middlebrow prestige. With only one exception every movie to have won the award since 2008 has been some kind of Oscar contender and previous winners include the likes of Jojo Rabbit, Green Book, and The King’s Speech… better movies than those win sometimes but in general they tend to be the kind of movies that your mother will love but “film twitter” generally won’t. I bring this up to say that movies that win these awards often come with some pretty big expectations and the question about them very quickly stops being “is the movie good at all” and instead becomes “does this movie deserve to be among the year’s best,” which can be a little unfair but, heavy lies the crown and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to begin looking at movies like this in terms of legacy given that they are plainly seeking awards attention. Belfast is in my mind better than all three of the movies I listed above but I’d also say it fits pretty well in that group more generally. Make no mistake I get why the movie has appeal and would impress a festival audience, it’s the kind of thing you can take the family to over Thanksgiving weekend and get more culture out of than whatever the latest Illumination movie is and it will be a very easy movie to recommend to casual movie goers. But personally, a “nicecore” movie about a pleasant family whose only failing is loving each other and their city too much is not what I’m looking for out of movies about sectarian violence or out of prestige cinema.
*** out of Five
I must say, if you had asked me fifteen years ago what direction the career of Kenneth Branagh would be going in during the 2010s I don’t think I could have given you a very accurate prediction. One could say that he fits the mold of the “actor turned director” but he didn’t really become any kind of household name until he started directing projects and casting himself. For much of his early career he was primarily known as “the Shakespeare guy” for his various adaptation of The Bard’s plays, particularly his Henry V and Hamlet, but that’s never really been the full extent of his work. He directed several original screenplays early in his career and even when he was at the height of his Shakespeare phase he was also adapting other literary works like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He hasn’t actually made a direct Shakespeare adaptation since 2006’s As You Like It but his directorial career has nonetheless continued to be defined by adaptations like his version of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express or his dip into Disney remakes with 2015’s Cinderella. Those were both highly commercial films actually and this guy, who you would think would have nothing but trouble in this era of franchise filmmaking, has been very willing to “play the game” and has kind of inexplicably thrived in the 2010s. This probably isn’t too shocking in retrospect as he has in his own way always been working with “IP” and despite being associated with highbrow source material Branagh has always been a populist at heart with a focus on outreach to the masses. This instinct really went into overdrive when he made the early MCU film Thor and it hasn’t always been the most dignified route to take as he’s attached himself to some rather regrettable projects like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and Artemis Fowl but when it comes to simply getting work he’s bigger now than he’s ever been and his most recent project, Belfast has quite a bit of Oscar buzz.
This is actually the first film in over 25 years to not be an adaptation of any kind of IP and appears to actually be a recounting of his own childhood growing up in the titular city of Belfast in the middle of “The Troubles.” Branagh’s surrogate is a nine year old kid named Buddy (Jude Hill) who lives in a Protestant family on a street that a number of Catholics live, making it a bit of a hotbed for sectarian violence. Buddy’s role in all of this is set up from the beginning when we get a shot (one that’s suspiciously similar to a scene in City of God) in which he finds himself caught standing between dueling gangs on Catholics and Protestants about to go at each other: the innocent caught between. His father (Jamie Dornan) does not really take either side in this conflict and just wants the violence over. He’s also very much in debt and can’t find work because of all the violence so he frequently travels to England to find employment. Soon he begins suggesting to his wife (Caitríona Balfe) that the family move there or even to Australia or Canada in order to escape the madness but she loves her city and doesn’t want to separate her children from their grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds), but with the conflict growing ever closer and with the finances getting tighter and tighter they may soon have no choice.
The child at the center of Belfast is named “Buddy” instead of “Kenny” but outside of that Branagh has done pretty much nothing to hide the fact that this movie is extremely autobiographical. The basic facts of Buddy’s life conform exactly to Branagh’s own circumstances in 1969 and the film does add some key scenes to establish Buddy’s burgeoning interest in film and the theater, but beyond that the film isn’t really about him, he’s more of a point of view character looking at his family and his surroundings from a certain perspective of innocence. This sort of “child’s eye view” of conflict is a fairly common trick used by filmmakers a lot in everything from Hope and Glory to Au Revoir Les Enfants and can at times be used to very good effect like in Grave of the Fireflies but all too often it kind of seems like an excuse to kind of ignore adult complexities about a given situation or period of history in favor of a sort of easy coming of age narrative through hard times and I would say that Belfast more often than not falls into that second category.
To put it frankly, I don’t think Buddy or by extension young Branagh had a terribly nuanced or complex understanding of the conflict he was in and that does not make him a terribly useful narrator of this story. On some level this is the point, to show how child resilience can normalize highly abnormal surroundings and continue to be a kid even when Molotov Cocktails are being thrown around them but in many ways this observation strikes me as being rather banal at this point. It certainly doesn’t help that Branagh paints this whole picture with a heavy sheen of nostalgia and gives the film a heavy focus on the importance of family and community bonding in the face of adversity and looks at his own family with some extremely rose colored glasses. Aside from some financial problems and associated stresses neither of his parents are shown to really be flawed in the slightest and every member of his family, to a person, does not express any sort of sympathy for either side of “The Troubles” and shows nothing but disgust for the whole conflict in general. It is entirely possible that the Branagh family really was this sterling paragon of tolerance and understanding, but I would argue that this makes them not terribly representative of the citizens of Belfast in this era or human nature in general and it might have been more interesting if Branagh had ventured a bit further outside his own experience and looked at people with a little more of a nuanced view of the situation.
This isn’t to say there isn’t plenty to like about Belfast because there certainly is. The film was shot in a nice crisp black and white, which was probably a good move. There are brief sections in color, namely some clips from the technicolor films that Buddy attends as well as some bookending footage of the modern city of Belfast which frankly appear to have been added on the behest of the North Irish tourism industry. The film also sports some pretty solid performances from the whole cast. The main kid Jude Hill is pretty good for what the film needs from him and isn’t too annoying despite the film basically making him a paragon of innocence. Jamie Dornan is also pretty good as the father and Caitríona Balfe probably gives the film’s rangiest most “Oscar clip” laden performance, but in a good way. I was also surprised to see Judi Dench here as the family’s grandmother, she feels different here than in other movies and works pretty well. The film’s handful of scenes of violence are mostly well staged, though there is a sort of standoff towards the end that rang pretty false to me. Branagh also chose to give the film a period soundtrack consisting mostly of the early music of Van Morrison, a choice that is perhaps a bit queezy given that singer’s recent foray into COVID conspiracy theories, but I’ve always liked the guy’s music and he is kind of a natural choice to be soundtracking a coming of age movie about North Ireland given both the wistfulness of his songs and the fact that he was one of the few superstars of the era from there. Also kudos for having the self-restraint not to use “Brown Eyed Girl.”
To clarify where I’m coming from, Belfast was the winner of the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival, which is an award that tends to align with a certain kind of uplifting middlebrow prestige. With only one exception every movie to have won the award since 2008 has been some kind of Oscar contender and previous winners include the likes of Jojo Rabbit, Green Book, and The King’s Speech… better movies than those win sometimes but in general they tend to be the kind of movies that your mother will love but “film twitter” generally won’t. I bring this up to say that movies that win these awards often come with some pretty big expectations and the question about them very quickly stops being “is the movie good at all” and instead becomes “does this movie deserve to be among the year’s best,” which can be a little unfair but, heavy lies the crown and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to begin looking at movies like this in terms of legacy given that they are plainly seeking awards attention. Belfast is in my mind better than all three of the movies I listed above but I’d also say it fits pretty well in that group more generally. Make no mistake I get why the movie has appeal and would impress a festival audience, it’s the kind of thing you can take the family to over Thanksgiving weekend and get more culture out of than whatever the latest Illumination movie is and it will be a very easy movie to recommend to casual movie goers. But personally, a “nicecore” movie about a pleasant family whose only failing is loving each other and their city too much is not what I’m looking for out of movies about sectarian violence or out of prestige cinema.
*** out of Five
