Kenneth Branagh's Belfast looked good to me when I saw a clip of it during the pandemic. Stark black-and-white photography, late-60s clothes that had The Troubles written all over them, handsome parents and older faces like Judi Dench and Ciarín Hinds. I'd like to see that, I thought to myself. Yesterday I saw the DVD at the KCC VPL, so I borrowed it.
The opening scene is a stagey neighbourhood idyll, more ballet than mosh pit, with a weirdly balletic transition to an angry mob of Catholics smashing windows and demanding that the Protestants behind them Move on! Go live with your own!
Fortunately, or unfortunately if violence is your thing, that's the worst of it. What remains of this nicely structured coming-of-ager are nose to nose threats from an extortion-seeking Protestant thug who targets the father for "cash or commitment" ("You're-either-with-us-or-against-us!"), and somewhat more gently, discussions between the same father who wants to emigrate and a mother who doesn't, because the neighbourhood is all she knows.
I know many whose families emigrated from Ireland in the 1960s, mostly from the Republic. Those who left the North had an advantage because Commonwealth countries (née the British Empire) were looking for skilled workers in all professions. The scene where emigration is introduced comes not in words but in images, when the father drops two pamphlets on the table: one for Sydney, the other for Vancouver.
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