My Irish Film Festival Continues

A while back I mentioned that a celebration of Irish drama by the Princeton department of Theater and Dance had spurred me to immerse myself in Irish literature as well. To that end, my Netflix queue has been full of films that are set in Ireland. Here is a summation of those I have seen in the last few weeks.

A few things I've learned--a lot of the films that are redolent of Ireland made in the last twenty years or so can be traced to a few people--Jim Sheridan, Neil Jordan, or Roddy Doyle. Also, the actor Colm Meaney, who is known to most Americans for his role in a Star Trek series, seems to be in every film ever made in Ireland.

Roddy Doyle is a novelist who is known for his Barrytown trilogy, Barrytown being a poor section of Dublin. All of them have been made into films, although the third, The Van, appears not be available on DVD. I took a look at the other two, The Commitments (which I had seen in the theaters before) and The Snapper. In both, Meaney plays a similar character, a working-class father who has a loose rule over an unruly brood of children. He has a very small role in The Commitments, as the father of Jimmy Rabbite, a would-be music impresario who cobbles together a rhythm-and-blues band. Jimmy doesn't like any kind of music except for American R&B, and manages to build a group that includes a bus conductor who with a dynamite set of pipes, a trumpet-player who did sessions with all the greats, and a trio of female singers. The film is a delight both for the music and the easy-going comedy of watching the band work together and then inevitably fall apart. It may well be the best film ever about Dublin. The Snapper is sort of a sequel. Meaney is again the father. His twenty-year-old daughter reveals she is pregnant, and zaniness ensues. Meaney is a wonder to behold as a man who loves his daughter and wants to be supportive, but has to deal with the small-mindedness of his neighbors, and his own prejudices when he learns who the father might be. This was a television film, directed by Stephen Frears, so it appears a bit rough around the edges.

Jim Sheridan is perhaps the most celebrated Irish director. I have a couple of his films coming up, In the Name of the Father and The Boxer, and he also directed In America. One of his earlier films was The Field, which earned Richard Harris an Oscar nomination. One of the lasting themes in Irish drama is the relationship between those that work the land and those who own it (oft times Englishmen). In this film, Harris plays a man who has turned a rubble-strewn field into a luxurious green meadow, only to have the owner put it up for auction. No one local would dare bid against him, but when an American with limitless funds steps in, the stakes become deadly. It's a fine film, and raises questions about just how far a man should go for something as precious as land.

Sheridan wrote, but did not direct, Into the West, a children's fable. This film is about a segment of Irish society called Travellers, or Tinkers, a nomadic group often associated with Gypsies. The story concerns two boys, sons of Gabriel Byrne, who used to be a traveller but has foresworn that life after the death of his wife. The boys come across a spectacular white horse, but it is stolen from them by a corrupt policeman and sold to a rich man. The boys steal the horse back, and set out for the west. The two boys give wonderfully natural performances, and I admit I got a little choked up at the end. Colm Meaney is in the cast, of course.

Another film for children is The Secret of Roan Inish, which was directed by the American John Sayles. I've always admired Sayles because he sets out to make the kind of movies he wants to, often on the cheap. I saw this one in the theaters when it first came out. It concerns a young girl sent to live with her grandparents (again after a mother dying), who live on the coast of Donegal. They used to live on an island called Roan Inish, and when they left her little brother floated away in the ocean in his cradle. There is lots of mysticism in the film, particularly concerning selkies, the mythological creature who is half-seal, half-human. The story is a bit thin and dry, but a nice film.

Neil Jordan is probably best known for The Crying Game (also coming up on my queue), but the film I just saw was Michael Collins, his biopic of the Sinn Fein leader who helped Ireland achieve independence in 1922. This is a marvelous, luscious film, full of politics and passion. Collins was, to use a word that is now a pejorative, a terrorist, who was responsible for much mayhem during the movement from the Easter rebellion right up to the time when the British finally buckled. He ordered many representatives of the crown assassinated. Eventually, he also took part in a civil war over a proposed treaty. Collins asserted that becoming a Free State would lead to eventual independence, while those who followed Eamonn de Valera wanted nothing less than a republic. Liam Neeson is magnificent as Collins, though Julia Roberts is kind of wasted as his love interest.

Learning about the civil war was useful, as later that day I read Sean O'Casey's play, Juno and the Paycock, which is set in 1922. There are many references to a Free State, so it was helpful to get a primer from the film.

Finally, a film that is from a younger generation of Irish filmmakers, Intermission. Directed by John Crowley and written by Irish playwright Mark O'Rowe (who appeared at the Princeton symposium earlier this fall) Intermission is a slice of contemporary Dublin life, and stars two of the bigger Irish film stars on the scene, Colin Farrell and Cillian Murphy. The film has several different story lines, all inter-connecting, similar to Pulp Fiction or Go!, ultimately centering on the ludicrous kindapping attempt by Murphy to win back his old girlfriend, Kelly McDonald. And who plays a pugnacious Dublin detective, who is always chasing after Farrell's thief character? Why, Colm Meaney, of course.