Review: Belfast

Image courtesy of Focus Features.

 

Obviously his most personal film to date, director Kenneth Branagh's "Belfast" is a lovingly rendered period piece that bears some resemblance to such films as "Roma" and "Hope and Glory." Seemingly based on incidents observed in his own childhood, the film details a period of great unrest in Northern Ireland during the late 1960s through the eyes of a 9-year-old boy named Buddy (the charming and expressive Jude Hill).

A dedication in the film's closing credits - "For the ones who stayed. For the ones who left. And for all the ones who were lost" - is a reasonable summary of Branagh's wistful work, which reimagines the titular city of his childhood as one providing the inspiration for great joy, but also posing grave danger. As the film opens, Buddy and his friends - in a mixed Protestant and Catholic neighborhood - are playing in the street to the sounds of Van Morrison, whose songs permeate the soundtrack.

Suddenly, an angry mob descends on the block, looting stores, breaking windows and pushing a burning car down the street that eventually explodes. Buddy's fiercely protective mother (Caitriona Balfe) grabs her two sons and makes them hide under the kitchen table until the melee has ceased. The group causing the disturbance is a number of local Protestants who are calling for other Protestants in mixed neighborhoods to put pressure on their Catholic neighbors to leave.

Buddy's father (Jaime Dornan) is away at the moment - as he usually is - because of his job that requires him to be in England much of the time. During his visits home, he becomes increasingly threatened by a group of young Protestant men who are angry he won't stand with them against the Catholics. At several points in the film, the concept of it taking a village to raise a child is hinted at, and in Buddy's case this is true. The young lad is raised not only by his mother, but also by his wise grandfather (a very good Ciaran Hinds), spunky grandmother (Judy Dench) and a teenage girl who initiates him into a gang by getting him to steal from a local candy store.

Although Northern Ireland's high unemployment rate and the seething tensions between Protestants and Catholics in 1969 are always specters hovering in the background of the film, the scenes obviously based on memory are given equal focus - for example, a family screening of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," young Buddy pining outside the window of a girl in his class with whom he is smitten, and Buddy's attempts at improving his grades in school, so that the teacher - who rewards her best students by seating them at the front of the class - will place him next to the girl.

Are there times when the film, perhaps, lays it on a little thick? Sure, there are a few of those, especially a wake that involves Dornan singing a 1960s chestnut and everyone dancing like they're being choreographed in a music video. But on the whole, this is no matter. "Belfast" is a highly enjoyable, nostalgic film about growing up, coming face to face with the horrors of the adult world and, eventually, moving on.

The world just outside Buddy's window may be teeming with hatred and prejudice, but what makes "Belfast" so infectious is the warmth of the characters in the family toward one another - Dench and Hinds have a teasing flirtation, despite having been married for many years, while Dornan and Balfe may argue frequently, mostly over Dornan's suggestion that they flee Belfast and move to Australia, but they live by the motto of not going to bed angry. 

Branagh's film displays a delicate balancing act - giving the very serious nature of Northern Ireland's atmosphere during this era the gravitas it requires, while also crafting a charming memory piece that looks back yearningly on the place where its creator grew up. And what makes "Belfast" so successful is that it is able to switch gears between such tones effortlessly, and because we care about the characters, even the most minor of whom are fully developed. There's already a fair amount of awards talk surrounding this movie, and it's not difficult to see why.