Directed by: Kenneth Branagh
Written by: Kenneth Branagh
Starring: Jude Hill, Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds, Lewis McAskie, Lara McDonnell, Colin Morgan, Olive Tennant
Belfast, Kenneth Branagh’s latest directorial effort is a marked shift in his career. He is coming off a recent streak of glitzy but ultimately hollow mainstream blockbusters such as Murder on the Orient Express, Cinderella, Thor, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit and the best disaster that was Artemis Fowl. Belfast is a much more intimate affair. A personal semi-autobiographical odyssey through 1960s Belfast using the beginning of The Troubles as the backdrop to tell a story about family and childhood. This is a film close to Branagh’s heart. It’s extremely likely to be a crowd-pleaser and big awards candidate due to its likeable characters and family dynamic, heartfelt sentiment and poignant setting but is it too slight to get to the true core of its historical setting? Perhaps but it was never aiming to be a comprehensive overview of The Troubles. Rather, this is primarily a story of tumultuous childhood therefore lacking the specificity of something that deals head-on with the impact of The Troubles.
The film tells the story from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), a 9-year-old boy living in Belfast in 1969 with his working-class protestant family: Pa (Jamie Dornan), Ma (Caitríona Balfe), Granny (Judi Dench), Pop (Ciaran Hinds) and Buddy’s older brother Will (Lewis McAskie). Opening with a scene of unrest where a group of protestants riot, intimidating the catholic locals whilst Buddy is playing in the street. This immediately sets up a tone of chaotic disarray that hangs over the rest of the film. From here the film slows down mainly consisting of everyday scenes of family life, Buddy’s days at school, his trips to the cinema. The disarray is always present and causing difficulties for the family but is ultimately less important to Buddy than who he sits next to at school or what film they are going to watch at the weekend.
Belfast is The Troubles from a child’s perspective therefore it focuses mainly on what Buddy believes to be important with The Troubles only as a vaguely scary threat that they are forced to live amongst, prompting more personal concerns such as the family’s discussions about moving away from Belfast. This is an interesting way to present the subject, tackling it specifically from a child’s point of view makes it instantly empathetic and easy to connect with. With a film like this which hinge so much of its heart and core on its central child performance, that child actor must be exceptionally good. Luckily, Jude Hill proves more than worthy at capturing the naïve innocence and emotionality of the role. For his debut role, Hill gives an impressively naturalistic and expressive performance that really sells the daily struggles and worries that Buddy is going through.
Jude Hill’s Buddy is by far the focal point of the film but doesn’t mean that the other actors don’t get a chance to shine. Caitríona Balfe gives an emotionally impassioned but steadfast performance as Buddy’s mother whilst Jamie Dornan is great as Buddy’s father who works overseas in London most of the time is trying to get the family to move out of Belfast. Together they make an extremely realistic and likeable family that are easy to root for. You want to see them succeed and you believe them as a loving, caring family unit which is where the film shines. As the film spends a lot of its runtime on quieter family moments and the emotional highpoints really trade on your attachment to this family which the closeness exudes from the performances. Added to this familial dynamic are Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds as Buddy’s grandparents. They have some of the best scenes and build a very believable and lovely grandparental bond with Buddy. Dench and Hinds are the warmth of the film, having a fair share of the light-hearted gentle humour as well as poignant moments. The film is entirely centered around family and these actors present a very loving and realistic portrayal of a close-knit family put under strain by circumstances well out of their own control.
Branagh frames The Troubles through the lens of a family drama, it is deliberately faint in how it describes and depicts the actual events at hand simply because Buddy does not know exactly why this is happening. He understands it is a problem between Protestants and Catholics but apart from that, he is unsure therefore the film doesn’t focus on the historical detail but on the personal ones. This means the film purposefully lacks edges and deep analysis of Troubles. There are many other stories that could be told about this time in Northern Ireland’s history, stories that would go deeper into displaying the reasons, the nuance, and the utter intensity of it all. However, Belfast is perfectly content at being more surface level, an introduction into what life for the average family was like during this period. It certainly has its sudden rushes of violent chaos that push you into the reality of the situation they are facing which work even better because the film is a quiet character-focused family drama for most of its runtime and these bursts of disorder are a sharp and shift jolt of truth amongst the more nostalgic warmth emanating from much of the film.
As this is such a personal tale for Branagh, a semi-autobiographical account of his upbringing, there is more than a tinge of wistfulness here. The black and white cinematography does add to the sense of nostalgia as well as acknowledging that this was a difficult and frustrating time to experience even though Branagh clearly has lots of fond memories of his formative years in Belfast. Apart from this general atmosphere, the black and white doesn’t add too much, it feels entirely like surface style rather than a deeply embedded necessary storytelling device. It’s a nice touch that works but it doesn’t do too much to enhance proceedings.
Verdict: Belfast is Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical look at life during The Troubles and is by far his most personal and intimate film. The captivatingly realistic central debut performance by Jude Hill and his believably warm dynamic with the rest of the family, Belfast is a heartfelt child’s perspective on experiencing these difficult times. Whilst it might not be the most challenging or in-depth look at The Troubles, as a personal family odyssey it soars.
Harry Abbott Reviews 