An unbiased account of the Troubles’ most fraught period
Nowadays, Northern Ireland’s Troubles are something most people seem to want to forget. But anyone in need of reminding just how brutal and bitterly entrenched the sectarian conflict was, needed only to watch The Funeral Murders
(BBC Two) for a short, horrifyingly vivid glimpse of hell.
The film by Vanessa Engle marked the 30th anniversary of an especially fraught period of bloodletting in Belfast spanning two funerals held within days of each other in 1988. Engle is more usually associated with subtly humorous, ironically slanted social observation documentaries such as Money and Inside Harley Street, though her films have always had a political edge. As it turned out, Engle’s transparent lack of partisanship, sharp ear for semantic subtlety, and even sharper eye for a revealing glance or telling background object, was precisely what was needed here.
Outlining the background – the shooting of three IRA terrorists in Gibraltar – she deftly reflected how reactions to those deaths divided along political lines. The tensions surrounding the return of the bodies to Belfast and the deadly attack on funeral-goers by a Loyalist terrorist (killing three and injuring 60) were viscerally recaptured via eyewitness testimony and footage recorded at the time. Also retold were the still more horrifying events that followed days later, amid extraordinarily high tensions at the funeral of one of the cemetery victims, when two British plainclothes soldiers made the mistake of driving into the path of the cortège (what they were doing there has never been explained) and were dragged from their car, brutally assaulted and shot by the IRA.
I well remember following the coverage of all of these events and, three decades on, they arouse no less revulsion. So for Engle to deliver such a balanced and non-judgemental account – encompassing the views of Republicans, Loyalists, police officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary, former soldiers and even ordinary passers-by, is quite an achievement. Whether she achieved her stated goal of “finding out what it means to us today” is less certain.
Some might criticise the film for not condemning, but that was never its aim. What one contributor described perceptively as the “battle of the narratives” – or competing interpretations of the facts – is clearly ongoing. The value of this film lies in reminding us that, despite the enourmous changes wrought by the peace process, scars and bitterness remain. And sectarian capacity to rise back to the surface should not be underestimated.
For a career in music you couldn’t want a better start in life than Andrew Lloyd Webber’s. As was described in Imagine… Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories (BBC One), what his family lacked in funds, they made up for in ambition (his mother was a piano teacher, his father a teacher at the Royal College of Music), talent and self-belief. They even had a feline pet called Perseus that inspired in young Lloyd Webber such a love of TS Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats that he eventually turned it into a worldwide smash hit musical.
This was a film that offered occasional moments of bright illumination. Of how the memory of a drunk Judy Garland getting a bad reception on stage gave Lloyd Webber the emotional key to the character of Eva Peron when lyricist Tim Rice put the idea for Evita to him. Or the tantalising fact that Judi Dench was originally lined up to star in Cats. Would her version of Memory have flown as high as last-minute replacement Elaine Paige’s did?
While the film focused on Lloyd Webber’s commercial success, it was disappointingly thin in terms of artistic appraisal. Though plenty of time was given to his early successes with Tim Rice, nothing was mentioned of why this celebrated writing partnership came to an end. And while much was made of his abiding love of theatres (he owns seven), there was little serious attempt to explore his musical influences, or legacy.
Even the string of musicals (Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, The Woman in White) Lloyd Webber created in the 20 years following his phenomenally popular The Phantom of the Opera was simply reeled off as a list until something with a more impressive balance sheet – School of Rock – came along to celebrate at length.
In the end, you couldn’t help feeling that even Lloyd Webber might have been happier with a less blandly box office-oriented assessment of his 50-year contribution to musical theatre.
The Funeral Murders ★★★★ Imagine… Andrew Lloyd Webber: Memories ★★