Belfast (2021)
Review of Belfast (2021), directed by Kenneth Branagh
One day I was trying to figure out what to do with my AMC A-List that week, and I knew that there were several options I didn’t want to see. Eternals was immediately ruled out because I don’t care about Marvel at all, while I knew I didn’t want to see the new movie version of Spencer yet because the trailer made it seem very boring. The last two choices were Dune and The French Dispatch, but I didn’t want to see either of those movies because I’d already seen them both. And that left me with one option that was towards the very bottom: an artisan film called Belfast.
I know nothing about Irish history. I never learned anything about Ireland in my education outside of the famine that was in the mid01800s and how that increased immigration to the United States. And, to be quite frank, as an American who’s more focused on Asian politics and the regular news, we never really hear anything about Ireland. So the content of this movie was quite fascinating from the synopsis alone, as the family we follow lives in Belfast during the late 1960s when a little something called The Troubles was happening in Northern Ireland.
Enough with that—let’s jump into this review, shall we? Please note that this review contains spoilers about the movie Belfast.
In 1969, one Irish family is forced to make a decision whether they need to leave their ancestral home behind due to increasing violence.
The setting seems ideal, quite scenic, at the very opening shots of the movie. We start with Belfast in color, in what seems to be a contemporary setting, before the world is awash with black and white visuals. The black and white fit really well in this movie, as it adds to the sense of nostalgia and the essence of youth in a way that makes it seem like we’re looking back at our own childhood.
We see our main character, Buddy, playing on the streets with a fake sword and a garbage lid as his shield, but when his mother calls him back for teatime, a violent riot breaks out on the streets all around him. His mother, despite being in fear, rescues him and gets his brother and under the table as she watched the street outside go up in flames.
The year is 1969 and this is when a small-scale war broke out in Ireland. The movie sets us up with a family that is Protestant, which is a conflict in this war: the Catholics and Protestants are on two opposing sides of this, one who wants to form their own country, Northern Ireland (Catholics), or stay with England (the Protestants).
Doing some research into this, religion actually wasn’t a key motivation for all of this, but they were labeled with the religious groups anyways. I wouldn’t have figured this out from the movie as little Buddy attends a Catholic church and is quite scared of the preacher. He also falls in love with a little Catholic girl from his class, as his grandfather gives him slick moves to literally get quite closer to her by faking his math calculations, thus showing a divide as he ponders how he can’t marry this girl if she’s Catholic (this kid is also quite young).
As the world seems to fall apart around them, it at times doesn’t seem like there’s a war in this movie. Despite there being a barricade in the neighborhood, we get a deeper glimpse into the lives of this family. The father, played by Jamie Dornan, appears once every two weeks. It seems he’s a trader of sorts, but the family also is in major debt. The mother struggles to raise her children alone, fights with her husband as she thinks they aren’t watching (but Buddy is indeed sitting at the top of the steps) and doesn’t want to leave Belfast behind.
Belfast is where the mother and father grew up on this very same street, the grandmother and grandfather still live here, and it’s basically the family’s ancestral home. And so when the father suggests leaving for England, Vancouver, or Australia, the mother is flabbergasted, unable to leave everything she knows behind. The father just wants to get his family out of the area before potential chaos erupts and reaches a boiling point, but the pushback he receives from the family is too much to actually make the move.
Violence is an undertone to this. As Buddy’s friend Moira forces him to join a gang for fun, the pranks they pull seem harmless at first, such as stealing candy from a local shop. Buddy is unable to understand why his mother is so upset at him for stealing that candy, but he learns right from wrong here.
The movie itself never actually shows any major violence outside of the destruction of inanimate objects, but it’s implied. For example, Buddy and his mother are held hostage by the man who keeps threatening Buddy’s father after a riot has occurred. He threatens to shoot them in front of the father and the other son to get what he wants, but nothing ends up happening as they escape.
It’s like there’s this tinge of childlike innocence attached to the entire plot. The only times we get hints at more adult decisions and themes are when the mother and father are fighting, such as when the mother starts throwing plates at the father. We also have a childish optimism that the grandfather, who has played such a wise and incredible role in this movie, becomes sick in his lungs and eventually passes on. This is the final nail in this coffin, per se, for Buddy’s youth. He is about to leave the Belfast he loves and knows behind.
There’s also some interesting use of symbolism in this movie. For example, the moments when we go to the cinema or theatre reflect moments of reality for our characters. The family movie in the car that’s descending shows the tumultuous situation for our main family; they think they’re plummeting into the ocean, but, at the end of the day, everything will be fine when it seems dire. We also see the theatre show at Christmas where we see the man seemingly chained up, one which can represent feeling chained to the past and life you’ve had here in Belfast.
Very few moments in this film are truly quiet. In the opening scene where Buddy was originally playing in the streets, we hear muffled voices as we get a full view of Buddy watching the chaos until it soundly blares back to life in your ears. As the family is in the house, we hear the television in the background with movies and news programs. It’s during these moments, too, when we are blasted back into moments of color after being in black and white for the majority of the film.
Overall Thoughts
It’s an interesting movie. It’s got this quietness to this that I’ve enjoyed a lot, especially after realizing the fact that there’s such a violent and tragic backdrop to it. I was in a theatre where I was the youngest person in the room; it seemed like this movie was geared towards an older crowd who remembered what occurred (everyone in my theatre was much older). There were some really tender familial moments scattered throughout the film, even if the elder brother is completely forgotten about the majority of the movie. I did find some of the time jumps to be a bit confusing, especially when trying to figure out what the context was, but it makes sense because we’re following Buddy, who’s viewing all of this with a tinge of innocence. One of the best moments in the film was when the mother and father were dancing after the funeral and singing; it made the entire movie worth it to me. I think if the movie was a bit more focused I would’ve enjoyed it more, as it got a little boring at times, but all in all, I actually enjoyed it.
