Belfast: An Innocent Perspective of Turmoil

An idealistic part of us likes to romanticize The Troubles, possibly the most volatile time in Ireland’s history. It’s easier to stomach a complicated power struggle when you’ve minimized it into a libertarian fever dream that free-market freaks like me can worship. Many movies have been made on the subject, Liam Neeson’s action-heavy, borderline-exploitative In The Land of Saints and Sinners being the first that springs to mind. However, Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast completely and surprisingly bypasses commenting on the conflict in any way, choosing to instead view a grown-up cold war through the innocent eyes of a boy who isn’t old enough to care about politics yet. It is a strange yet effective movie where winning the heart of Catherine, the cute girl in math class, is more important to him than the complex religiopolitical issues tearing his country apart.

A semi-autobiography of Branagh’s early life, Belfast whisked me back to a time in my own childhood where I felt completely powerless, though I was fortunate enough not to grow up surrounded by riots, barbed wire, and exploding military vehicles. Buddy’s family wants to move to either Canada or Australia, but the boy is more worried about moving a world away from Catherine and throws a fit about it on Christmas Day, of all days. There is an innocent optimism that pervades this movie despite its subject matter, an optimism born out of the fact that Buddy simply doesn’t understand everything happening around him. His Protestant minister spits fire and brimstone against the Catholics, warning Buddy of the wide road that leads to destruction and the narrow road that leads to life, but Buddy has trouble remembering which road leads to salvation later on, as most any child in his situation would.

This movie's visuals are black-and-white, as it’s set in a time when we hadn't yet invented such novelties as color cameras. However, the opening credits are set in color until we reach a shot of a beautiful painting on a brick wall. The camera pans up over the wall, and the neighborhood that appears behind it is drained of color, like press photos of the Troubles you can find online. The lack of color grants Belfast a timeless quality that’s a little like a lesser cousin to the enduring legacy of Schindler’s List. I love how obvious this movie makes it that Buddy doesn’t always know how the world around him works, as evidenced by his saying that, when he grows up, he and another boy who has a crush on Catherine can both marry her. He lives in the conflict but not of the conflict, which mostly plays as background ambiance in his life. His innocence can also be tragic. He watches people do horrible things to each other and misunderstands what is actually happening, and while we, the viewers, have context as adults, he doesn’t.

However, it’s hard to misunderstand a bomb going off. The riots that can suddenly erupt around Buddy at a moment’s notice seem from his perspective to be simultaneously chaotic yet motionless. All the movement and sound sometimes fade away while his young mind comes to terms with the violence. As for this violence, it’s sparing and yet urgent, quick and sharp flashes of chaos. The frantic sound design elevates it, capturing so many different violent acts so quickly and overwhelming us with yet another loud act of violence before our brains have even had the time to process the previous one.

There’s a helplessness to watching Buddy and his innocent perception of the world be overpowered, in a good way. However, the characters in this movie and their small, seemingly useless skills are put to good use once everything hits the fan and the rioters fill the streets; knocking objects off someone else’s head with a baseball takes an accurate arm that can serve you well when it comes to violence. All of these characters are doing their best to live their lives in this violent world, and I like how their little idiosyncrasies give each of them unique ways to survive the chaos and learn to live and love despite it. 

Still, Belfast isn’t perfect, with its biggest flaw being a mismatched conflict between Buddy’s world and his parents’ world. Of course, Buddy has his mind set on Catherine most of the time, but the movie doesn’t really make winning her heart a concrete goal for him; we don’t see him planning, scheming, or even really thinking about her, and unfortunately, Catherine is reduced to an afterthought that will pop up again later in the movie and make you go oh, I almost forgot about her. It also partially sidelines the darker themes it wants you to remember in your gut, themes at odds with his childish dreams. I’ll grant that this sidelining is the point, but Belfast can struggle to articulate whether it wants to be optimistic or pessimistic.

At the end of the day, this movie is about its characters, and it readily acknowledges that people have different sides to them. Remember that Protestant minister who ranted and raved against Catholics in church? He’s a relatively minor character, one whom I thought I had seen the last of once Buddy left church, only for him to give a touching eulogy for a character who passes near the movie’s end, completely out of character for the man I took him to be. Belfast initially seems interested in casting judgment on some, but over time, it becomes apparent that it’s a little more intent on viewing people as the complicated beings they are. In many ways, this movie grows up alongside Buddy as he lives through The Troubles and alongside us, too, while we watch him.

This movie may be about a grown-up’s issues from the perspective of a child, but it mercifully avoids relegating the child to the role of well-meaning idiot who can’t make any good points. Buddy usually knows when something is wrong and sinful, and he sees more wrongdoing and sinfulness than any child his age should. However, his worldview is not fully developed yet, and Belfast uses our own perspective of right and wrong to its advantage in grim strokes of irony, making the source material feel heavier when we know he and other children are explaining it to each other without context. His imagination runs wild; he can go to the movies and be captivated by them as any child can, and he can run through the streets with a wooden sword and a trash can lid for a shield. Could that imagination survive such a time of volatility? 

Belfast - 8/10

1 John 3:7-10