Emotion, nostalgia compete on Branagh’s memory lane
Everything that works in “Belfast” keeps the movie’s superficialities and lower-grade sentiment at bay — if not every step of the way, then at least every other step. I’d happily see writer-director Kenneth Branagh’s semi-autobiographical film again just for Ciaran Hinds, the Platonic ideal of a dream Irish grandpa. His scenes as Pop, shared with Judi Dench, as Granny, lift a genial crowd-pleaser to another, truer level.
This is Branagh’s “Amarcord,” or “Roma,” with blander food. “Belfast” finds the filmmaker revisiting a crucial juncture in his Protestant family’s life, when young Ken Branagh — the character played by Jude Hill is called Buddy — was 9 years old, living a happy, tumultuous existence undergoing increasingly violent change. The years covered here, 1969 to 1970, were marked in Northern Ireland by The Troubles: Protestants vs. Catholics, unionists vs. nationalists.
Branagh stages the overture to “Belfast” in such a way — frantic, assaultive, messy — as to remind us that he has been a wildly uneven director his entire screen life. In this movie’s case, the unevenness of tone and visual approach never stops. Buddy’s firsthand encounter with a window-smashing Protestant mob attacking Catholic houses recalls any number of movie scenes. This is, unapologetically, a movie about a boy in love with the movies.
The Troubles writ large in “Belfast” frame Buddy’s
family’s troubles. “Pub man” Pa (Jamie Dornan) works in England and comes home when he can. Combustible Ma (Caitriona Balfe) doesn’t like her husband’s plan to relocate to Reading, England. The grandparents are just two of many, many family relations living a stone’s throw from Buddy’s house.
The violence at home, and direct threats (mostly invented by Branagh for the movie) to the family’s safety, push things to a crisis point. Getting there is rocky in more ways than one. Some of Branagh’s scenes are adorable in the worst way: the getting-toknow-you montage with Buddy and his Catholic sweetheart; the misjudged
“High Noon” homage, arriving at a point in “Belfast” when we really don’t need another film reference.
Half the time “Belfast” feels as if it’s revisiting a complicated series of emotions; the other half settles for tidy, audienceconscious conflict and resolution and feel-good interludes. This is where Hinds and Dench come in handy: They’re not above shamelessness, but they’re complementary wizards who know how to simply be on camera, feeling their way through a scene easily and naturally.
Branagh is a first-rate actor, though his own scenes (as older Buddy) never made the final cut
here. He’s a pretty good screenwriter and playwright.
Around the midpoint “Belfast” gets good. Many will adore it all the way through. Me? I hope Branagh revisits his own life again on screen, just to see if he can come up with something as wonderful as “Belfast” fans believe “Belfast” to be.
MPAA rating: PG-13 (for some violence and strong language)