HEAVEN AND HELL (BELFAST)

'Belfast, how I know you so well. You're like Heaven. You're like Hell.'

During the tail end of Northern Ireland's Troubles those three lines in the song 'Belfast' by the band Energy Orchard seemed to best sum up the ambivalence of many people in the city towards their hometown.

To live in Belfast during the Troubles was a schizophrenic experience.

On the one hand, there was a wonderfully earthy sense of humour in the city, a deep love for sport and the arts, a warmth towards visitors even though they were rare and a deep sense of community.

On the other, there was fear - fear that violence could erupt at any minute, fear and bitterness about the loss of life and a deep, deep unease about the sectarian division fostered at an early age.

Twenty eight years on from the IRA and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires, Belfast still bears the scars of a 25 year conflict.

That may sound like a cliché but it's not.

It's a fact.

Heavily fortified peace walls still separate loyalist and republican communities throughout the city.

The so-called "peace walls" separating them are a physical manifestation of the emotional scars and sectarian division that remain in the city to this day.

Almost 24 years on from the Good Friday Agreement and 23 years after the form of power sharing it ushered in, sectarianism is a cancer that still blights many neighbourhoods.

All sides, including the British and Irish Governments, remain divided about how to address the legacy of a conflict whose trauma is being passed on to future generations.

Healing and integration has been slow - too slow.

Nevertheless Belfast is clearly in a much better place than it was in 1994.

It's a thriving city that tourists thronged to prior to the COVID pandemic and hopefully will again soon.

It is not uncommon these days to stumble upon film crews on the city's streets shooting movies or hit TV shows like 'Line of Duty' or 'Derry Girls'.

Belfast has great restaurants, lively bars and a vibrant arts scene.

It is a city of commerce and innovation, making its mark in the field of cybersecurity, the creative sector, finance and legal services.

Its people remain warm and wonderfully self deprecating.

And while street violence occasionally rears its ugly head, politicians and community leaders have worked hard to de-escalate tensions and ensure it doesn't gather momentum.

It's safe to say there's a lot more Heaven about Belfast today than Hell.

Those Heavenly and Hellish qualities are very much in abundance in Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical movie 'Belfast'.

A love letter to the 61 year old actor and director's native city, many moviegoers unfamiliar with Branagh's past may be surprised to learn he was a child of the Troubles.

But there is no doubting his sense of pride and deep affection for his hometown as the opening credits roll for a movie that has become a major awards contender.

To the sound of the city's greatest musical icon Van Morrison, Branagh bombards his audience initially with images that would do Visit Belfast proud.

As Morrison's 'Down to Joy' plays over the soundtrack, the Greek Cypriot cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos's camera hovers over the city as it is today, grabbing images of the Titanic Quarter, the old shipyard slipways, the city's eye catching murals, Cathedral Quarter and the beauty of Belfast Lough.

Within minutes, though, we move from the colourful world of modern Belfast to the monochrome black and white of North Belfast in 1969.

We peer over a wall to look at a bustling working class neighbourhood with kids playing football and pretending to be knights on its narrow streets, dads returning from work and mums calling their children into their two up, two down houses for tea.

As Jude Hill's nine year old Buddy is summoned by his Ma, played by Catriona Balfe, this little piece of Heaven suddenly gives way to Hell.

Zambarloukos's camera literally goes into a spin as loyalist hardmen ransack the neighbourhood, attacking the homes of Catholic families.

Buddy is frozen with fear during this eruption of bitterness and violence.

Luckily his Ma grabs him and uses the metal dustbin lid he was using to pretend he was a knight to shield them from the storm of bricks and other missiles and she ushers him into the relative safety of their home.

Buddy and his older brother, Lewis McAskie's Will cower under the kitchen table as the mob orders Catholic families to leave.

A car is set alight, exploding in the street.

After the violence comes the first signs that conflict is taking root.

Pavements are ripped up and barricades are erected at the end of Buddy's street to prevent the mob from returning.

British soldiers appear as violence erupts in other neighbourhoods across the city and it doesn't take long for this abnormal way of life to become normalised.

Families go about their business against the backdrop of barricades and simmering sectarian tension.

Not oblivious to this changed environment, Buddy still dreams of playing for Tottenham Hotspur and of the films and TV shows he watches.

He goes to school, hoping to catch the eye of Olive Tennant's Catherine, a Catholic classmate who he informs his grandfather, Ciaran Hinds' Pop he hopes to one day marry.

His father, Jamie Dornan's Pa returns from England for a weekend after two weeks working on building sites.

Pa, though, grows increasingly concerned about the chaos erupting in his hometown.

Appalled by the treatment of his Catholic neighbours, he is harassed by Colin Morgan's local loyalist hardman Billy Clanton who warns him that he and his family will have to choose whether they will side with their fellow Protestants or get out of the neighborhood.

"Touch my family and I'll kill you," Pa retorts.

Branagh's film soon settles into the rhythm of a working class family managing to get by in spite of the lockdown imposed on their community by the threat of sectarian violence.

While his father periodically appears and disappears to England for work, Buddy turns to Pop for advice about his homework and how to catch Catherine's eye, while Judi Dench's Granny makes sarcastic comments from her living room window.

Clanton hassles Buddy and his brother about getting Pa to side with the Ulster loyalists, while Lara McDonnell's older girl Moira engages him in confused conversations about how to identify a Catholic.

She also ropes Buddy into a three person gang whose first task is to steal sweets from a local newsagents.

Beset by debts to the taxman and increasingly concerned about the impact the emerging conflict is having on his boys, Pa leans on Ma to consider uprooting the family to Sydney, Vancouver or London.

However with Pop's health deteriorating and her deep affection for her neighbours, she is reticent.

Written and directed by Branagh, 'Belfast' is as bittersweet as the Fry's Turkish Delight that Buddy swipes from the newsagents.

A film about resilience in the face of major political upheaval and strong family bonds, it is by far the most impressive movie he has made as a director - eclipsing the work he did on the hugely underrated 1994 movie 'Mary Shelley's Frankenstein' and his wonderfully opulent version of 'Hamlet' two years later.

A big part of the film's success is down to Zambarloukos's superb camera work which immediately draws favourable comparisons to Alfonso Cuaron's fantastic Oscar winning autobiographical tale of a family in Mexico City, 'Roma' and Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski's magnificent 'Cold War'.

However the look of Branagh's film is also hugely influenced by Carol Reed's gripping 1947 Belfast thriller 'Odd Man Out' with James Mason, whose cinematographer Robert Krasker also mixed expressionist images with angled shots and tight close-ups.

It's hard not to see parallels too between Buddy's childhood view of the conflict and Sebastian Rice Edwards' Bill Rowan in John Boorman's delightful 1987 movie about London during the Second World War, 'Hope and Glory'.

Like Boorman's film, 'Belfast' basks in the warmth of its tight knit family and the innocence of a young boy as horrific events unfold around him.

Traumatic events are seen through the eyes of a nine year old and so the looting of a supermarket that Buddy, Moira and Ma get sucked into soon gives way to a 'High Noon' style stand-off between Pa and Billy Clanton.

A fire and brimstone sermon by Turlough Convery's Protestant minister also scares the wits out of Buddy.

Visits to the cinema to see Raquel Welch in 'One Million Years BC' and Dick Van Dyke and his flying car in 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' provide a welcome escape for Buddy and his family from the grim reality of life, much like the Liverpudlian cinemagoers in Terence Davies' masterpieces 'Distant Voices, Still Lives' and 'The Long Day Closes'.

Superbly edited by the BAFTA award winning Una Ni Dhonghaile, 'Belfast' skips to the rhythm of Van Morrison's best work, with 'Bright Side of the Road,' 'Jackie Wilson Said' and 'Days Like This' all getting an airing.

At the core of Branagh's film, however, lies an exuberant performance by newcomer Jude Hill as Buddy.

Unfazed by the accomplished cast assembled around him, Hill is delightfully cheeky and innocent as he trades banter with Hinds, Dench, Dornan and Balfe.

The two standout performances in the movie come from Balfe and Hinds.

Balfe is excellent as a mother trying to protect her sons from the escalating conflict.

Her face is also riddled with worry about keeping the household afloat amid mounting debt.

She and Dornan make a hugely charismatic couple - the latter also delivering his best work on the big screen as an earnest and principled father.

Hinds and Dench convince as a loving, bantering elderly couple.

Hinds is the grandad everybody in Belfast would wish for - witty, caring and avuncular.

While Dench's Belfast accent occasionally wobbles, slipping between both sides of the Irish border, she is nevertheless very convincing as a modest, loving grandmother.

Branagh regulars, Gerard Horan and Michael Maloney impress as the family's neighbours, giving spirited performances as Mackie and Mr West and they easily master the Belfast vowel sounds and vernacular.

Morgan brings the right level of menace to the part of Clanton, while Convery has fun belting out the fear of God oratory from his religious pulpit as if he was the Rev Dr Ian Paisley.

It's easy to see why some critics could accuse 'Belfast' of slipping into cheesiness and of being too sentimental.

Branagh gets away with it, though, because despite your reservations about Pa serenading Ma with a version of Love Affair's 'Everlasting Love' or the 'High Noon' sequence with Clanton, you have to accept that this is a child's version of events.

A nine year old like Buddy, who is so into his movies, could conceivably imagine his dad as Gary Cooper or his parents as Fred and Ginger.

And don't listen to the nonsense from Max Hastings that the film soft soaps the city as it was in 1969.

'Belfast' doesn't soft soap what happened. 

It feels ashamed and serves as a grim reminder of how horrible the Troubles were in the fervent hope they never happen again.

It gives a genuine account of what it was like to live in a city consumed by conflict.

While Hastings may have had a different experience as a visiting reporter, people living in the city had a much different one to his.

Their tales are tales of fortitude and resilience in Belfast's darkest hours but they also capture the camaraderie, the community spirit and the salty humour.

In 'Belfast,' the lad from Mountcollyer Street has captured the sensation of what it was like to live in the Heaven and Hell of 1969.

It is, of course, just one tale in a city packed with loads of Troubles tales but it is stirringly told.

Despite the Hellish events it depicts occasionally, 'Belfast' is nonetheless a warm hug of a movie.

As the credits roll on Branagh's film and we get one more blast of Van Morrison singing his epic song 'And the Healing Has Begun' it's hard not to feel a lump in your throat.

But you also cannot help feeling while listening to Van at his very best: here's hoping the healing really has begun. 

('Belfast' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on January 21, 2022)

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