Belfast

 

Belfast 2021

• Director: Kenneth Branagh
• Seen by this director: All Is True, Death on the Nile, Murder on the Orient Express, Cinderella, Thor, Sleuth, The Magic Flute, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hamlet, In the Bleak Midwinter, Frankenstein, Much Ado about Nothing, Peter’s Friends, Dead Again, Henry V 
• Based on book: no
• Cast: Jude Hill, Lewis McAskie, Caitríoni Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Judi Dench, Ciarán Hinds, Colin Morgan
• Jamie Dornan – The Fall
• Judie Dench – All Is True, Murder on the Orient Express, Victoria & Abdul, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, The Hollow Crown, Bond etc, Hotel Marigold 1&2, Philomena, Vicious, My Week with Marilyn, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Nine, Notes on a Scandal, Mrs Henderson Presents, Ladies in Lavender, The Shipping News, Chocolat, Tea with Mussolini, Shakespeare in Love, Mrs Brown, Hamlet, Henry V, A Handful of Dust, 84 Charing Cross Road, A Room with a View, Macbeth
• Ciarán Hinds – First Man, The Woman in Black, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter, Life During Wartime, Margot at the Wedding, Hallam Foe, Amazing Grace, Calendar Girls, Titanic Town, Jane Eyre, Ivanhoe, Cold Lazarus, A Mother’s Son, Mary Reilly, Circle of Friends
• Colin Morgan – Humans, The Fall, The Living and the Dead, The Laughing King, Legend, Testament of Youth, The Tempest, Quirke, Merlin, Parked, The Island, Doctor Who
• Why bought: Branagh
• Seen: 24 March 2023. 

Belfast 1969. Young Buddy (Hill) is growing up in a Protestant family - Mum (Balfie), Dad (Dornan), brother (McAskie), grandmother (Dench) and grandfather (Hinds) - where there are still Catholic families. The kids all play together but adult men riot violently to get rid of them. Soldiers, barbed wire, music and dancing, firebombs, football, arguments, discussions, threats, roadblocks - all in the street. Buddy is confused but life goes on. A fanatical neighbour (Morgan) threatens them, and Buddy takes refuge in the cinema and theatre.

      It’s more or less Branagh’s autobiography and is no doubt the best non-Shakespeare film he’s made.

 4 ½ * of 5