REVIEW: Belfast

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the world needs more black and white movies. 

    The latest to answer the call is Kenneth Branagh with his semi-autobiographical film, Belfast. The film follows Buddy, the audience-insert character, as he grows up in the streets of Belfast, Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though Buddy and his family thrive on these familiar streets, communal turmoil leads to organized violence that throws Buddy's life into disarray. What's a family to do? On the one hand, the father recognizes that a warzone is no place for a family. But to the mother, even the turmoil of her community's civil war feels safer than the world out there. Memory feels safer than maturation. 

    As these films often go, the plot is drifting and episodic yet always manages to hold one's focus. Unbrushed authenticity is a hard thing to put to film, and a film aiming for just that always walks a fine line between avant-garde and just plain gimmicky. We'll occasionally see the film capture the action at deliberately awkward angles, or some other hat trick. Graciously, such quirks appear just long enough for you to notice them without overstaying their welcome.

    The movie's map of nostalgia stretches beyond the boundaries of mere bliss or innocence. Arguably, Buddy was never "innocent" to begin with. The havoc explodes into Buddy's life within the first minutes of the film. (There's literally a scratch on the paper in my notes marking when the first explosion caught me off guard.) Buddy and his family have definitely lost something by the end, but it isn't quite as straightforward as "childhood innocence." And the film is quietly wise to recognize that maturation doesn't begin and end with that transition. Who knows? Maybe we're all still children graduating from our own childish mindsets.

  Lead actor Jude Hill carries a youthful bounce in his speech, a sort of confidence that speaks to a child's perceived sense of infallibility. Buddy's father, played by Jamie Dornan, is more than happy to come to meet Buddy at his level, lending itself to a natural dynamic between the two. Just so, the best performance of the film probably belongs to Ciaran Hines, who overflows with warmth in his performance as "Pop." Think James Stewart in Harvey playing the world's best grandfather.

    Belfast may be forced to share the table with films of similar styles and ambitions (e.g. Roma), but as long as such films continue to show this same measure of care, we'll save them a spot.

            --The Professor