If you want the truth, forget the film and read Conor’s great book
The Siege of Jadotville is well worth seeing, but the depiction of Conor Cruise O’Brien is a travesty, says his grandson, Alexander Kearney
IT’S an odd sensation to walk into a cinema and watch Mark Strong play your grandfather. The improbability of that match has been stressed by several critics (somewhat unfairly, I should add), but those same critics have passed over far greater liberties in silence.
I have never before been moved to speak up for Conor because, as readers of this paper will recall, he was never shy about doing that himself. Yet the accuracy of this film has been raised, and by extension Conor’s portrayal in it, and that simply won’t do. Since he’s no longer about to point out the obvious, I will: The Siege of Jadotville is a stirring account of outstanding heroism by Irish UN troops in Katanga; but, as far as Conor goes, it’s a travesty.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the film; I’ve seen it twice. The action scenes are thrilling. Bullets and mortars really do seem to bang and whirr about your head.
Jamie Dornan, and especially Jason O’Mara, impress in their roles as Comdt Pat Quinlan and Sgt Prendergast.
Surprisingly enough, Mark Strong does look the part — well, almost. Strong is a good 10 years older than Conor was in 1961, but if anything looks a little younger (heavy responsibilities will do that) and a little trimmer too (no time at the gym for Conor).
Strong’s wig has been mocked, but seeing Conor in old newsreel footage, I think it’s pretty accurate: his dark, side-parted hair actually did look as though it had just landed on his head, and Strong’s stylist has successfully reproduced the errant forelock and its regular bid for escape.
One small mercy: Strong doesn’t try to mimic Conor’s voice at the time — an exotic mix of TCD scholar and World Service announcer. His altogether more neutral tones make several diversions between London, Dublin and the mid-Atlantic, but in the main they don’t distract.
What does distract, at least to those who knew him in life, is the character presented on screen. Here we must allow that any fictionalised account has the right to alter character and trim fact according to the demands of running time and plot.
This is primarily an action film, and it should be commended for trying to address its wider geo-political context. That’s no easy thing.
Historians have spent the last half-century untangling the precise roles of the UN and the Great Powers in the newly independent Congo and its breakaway province of Katanga. Mysteries remain. No: it’s the specific role assigned to Conor that gives offence.
We first meet Strong/ O’Brien striding along a corridor in UN Headquarters in New York, rehearsing and fumbling his notes for a speech on Katanga.
I was amused by this, as Conor never seemed to be flustered in preparation. After a brief meeting with Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld — who flatters him with the prospect of advancement should he end Katanga’s secession — he’s quickly dispatched to its capital, Elizabethville.
From this point on, Strong’s role is to act as arrogant foil to the rugged Comdt Quinlan. All the administrative faults of the UN operation are heaped on Conor’s shoulders, one charitably assumes for reasons of space. Along with the various narrative burdens he’s forced to assume, the makers have excised all mention of his first operation on the ground — Rumpunch, a deft and bloodless military exercise, stymied by outside political interference.
The unsuspecting viewer could be forgiven for assuming that Conor landed in Katanga, arms swinging, operation Morthor in breast pocket, heedless in his complacency.
In fact, he arrived in Katanga several months before Morthor (Hindi for “Smash”) — a rather bolder plan than Rumpunch — to thwart the Congo’s break-up. He didn’t assume, as he does here, that “they would never dare attack a UN company”. Nor can I imagine him saying “It’ll all be over before your company gets a sun tan” — not least because he possessed some wit.
A brief scene of Strong idly reading a newspaper as a black servant polishes his shoes slyly suggests a colonial outlook. Conor’s lifelong commitment to anti-colonial and anti-racial politics utterly belies this.
Yet there is worse. Conor is next shown at the immediate aftermath of a massacre by Indian UN troops at Radio Katanga.
The massacre did indeed take place, but I have read nothing to place Conor at the scene, nor to direct — as Strong is made to — a cover-up.
The UN did hush-up outrages by its troops in the Congo (still does), and as the film outlines, there was some reason: fear of reprisal against its troops. However, to put Conor solely in the frame, and to imply that he acted with a view to saving his career, is to turn distortion into calumny.
At least, the film shows Dag’s duplicitous efforts to cut Conor loose once Morthor went off the rails.
While en route to a meeting with the Katangan leader, Hammarskjöld tells Conor he intends to fire him (no such call was made). When Conor later learns of Hammarskjöld’s death in a plane crash, Strong’s face presents quite the picture. A belated “Oh, God” suggests both shock and something dodged. In reality, Conor described himself as in a state too numb to feel.
Ultimately, the script’s most insidious suggestion is that Conor denied Quinlan
the air support required to spare his men’s surrender and then colluded with army top brass to block citations for A Company’s heroic stand.
Both are demonstrably false. Strong is even shown skulking in a Baldonnel hangar, while in the sunshine a fictionalised general tells Quinlan there’s to be no mention of Jadotville. “Is this coming from you — or O’Brien?” an indignant Quinlan asks.
By Happily,this timeI can (late answer Decemberhim. 1961), Conor had very publicly left both the UN and the Department of External Affairs — “extruded” was his word — to give the world his side of the story.
No skulking in the shadows there, and no collusion with the UN or Irish Government; he was now persona non grata with both.
The end titles don’t mention that, and sadly they don’t mention To Katanga and Back, his urgent, funny, rueful and picaresque account of that extraordinary and tragic adventure, now re-issued by Faber.
If you want to appreciate the exploits of Comdt Quinlan and A Company, by all means, watch The Siege of Jadotville. If you want to experience Conor’s role and character in the Congo up close, forget the film and read To Katanga and Back.
It isn’t fiction, but it reads with the suspense and intrigue of a thriller.
Alexander Kearney is the son of the late Kate Cruise O’Brien.
The Siege of Jadotville is in cinemas now and available on Netflix from October 7.
Twelve of Conor Cruise O’Brien’s titles, including To Katanga and Back, have been re-issued by Faber & Faber.