Knowing nothing about this movie in advance except its title, cast, and writer/director, I can tell you it's a complete and utter shock. Because it does indeed take place in Belfast during the earlier part of "The Troubles," the ethnic-nationalist series of conflicts that traumatized Northern Ireland for three decades. Yet the film doesn't really concern those issues, at least not at any macro level. Rather, Branagh tells a story of a young boy named Buddy who grows up in a working class family and tries to make sense of the conflict around him even as he learns to love the city they call home. The film is hardly fresh in its delivery -- it will invariably and unfortunately be compared to Alfonso Cuaron's Roma -- but Branagh is wearing his heart on his sleeve in a way that is accessible and meaningful to wide audiences, unlike that other over-lauded flick.
Its sweetness and sense of joy might feel, initially, undermined by Branagh's decision to shoot the film in black-and-white. But this vision endears it to a certain understanding of memory, reminding us that our past is plastic and as fantastic now as it was real then. It also helps us, perhaps see things from Branagh's childhood perspective a bit better, as Buddy is obviously meant to be a stand-in for the writer/director. His innocence and view of the world is occasionally complicated by sudden bursts of color, less traumatizing as in Schindler's List and more sentimental. Actually, tonally, I'd compare this more to Jojo Rabbit; although it is less absurdly comedic and more warm-hearted, there is a distinct effort to make sense of childhood trauma framed by ethnic and nationalist conflicts that, in turn, have fostered generational trauma still affecting descendants today.
Surely, as Branagh drew from his own experiences coming of age as a boy, we see and hear about the tumults in 1969 largely in broken fashion. Someone who knows nothing about the political problems in Ireland still won't be able to claim understanding after watching this movie; it's not a historical text, per se, but a memoir. Frankly, I don't know most of the details of this time period or location, but I knew enough to catch on that this movie wouldn't teach me anything new. Rather, through adult conversation heard through eavesdropping, Buddy (and we) learn that his parents are Protestant but unwilling to join their neighbors and fellow churchgoers in intimidating and, ultimately, attacking the local Catholics. As such, their household is in danger, and they face the choice to flee to England.
It's a fascinating look at the breaking of childhood molds for most of its first two-thirds. Buddy likes a girl in class -- the best girl in class -- and works hard to catch up to her academically so they can sit together in the front row. To help, Buddy is tutored by his wise and loving grandfather "Pop" (Ciaran Hinds), who simultaneously helps mend any potential fractures in his son's marriage. His son (Jamie Dornan) works in England and can only return home sporadically to his wife (Caitriona Balfe) and sons. Buddy overhears his parents arguing about a certain neighbor (Colin Morgan) who has targeted them for not standing up for the Protestant cause, a threatening figure who repeatedly comes calling. Buddy also learns to love his home from Pop, and how to love a woman like his grandmother (Judi Dench); when the day comes that the family discusses leaving Belfast, Pop indicates he will almost certainly stay in the place he's lived his whole life.
It seems like everyone in this movie knows darkly that they are operating on a quickly ending timeline, but they put on brave smiles and keep making do, celebrating holidays and playing in the streets even as barricades are erected. When Pop becomes ill and hospital-bound, at the worst possible time for the family, they still joke with each other and encourage each other to move on. Even as their homeland is crumbling around them, Buddy's grandparents shift from bellyaching about each other affectionately to intimately dancing in the living room as Pop sings Camelot's love ballad "How to Handle a Woman." In breathtaking moments like these, we see Branagh's determination to bring nascent, impressionistic memories to vivid life. But unlike Roma, which felt like a disjointed and badly annotated scrapbook of images, Belfast consistently makes itself accessible to people whose only context is that a conflict of religion and politics is brewing. Entrenching us in the experience of a child, one attempting to live his own life despite hardships, evokes the kind of "dear reader" feeling we get from reading The Diary of Anne Frank.
Thankfully, this story doesn't involve that level of genocide, and apart from one particularly nightmarish gunfight in the street there isn't even much violence. But the emotional turmoil in Buddy's heart revs its engines in the final act of this film, when his family is forced to decide to leave their home, their neighbors, and their family. But to where will they transplant? England, where Pa already has a job? Or a more romantic, distant place like Vancouver or Sydney, as he mentioned earlier in the film? We don't ever really find out (of course Branagh in real life moved to England) except for the final sequence of the film, as Granny sends her son and his family away on a bus and achingly walks alone back to her house. Branagh dedicates this film thus: “For the ones who stayed. For the ones who left. And for all the ones who were lost.”
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