A Traditional Oscar Movie, With an Irish Indie Twist

By Josh Lancman ‘24
It could have been worse. 
I recently got the opportunity to participate in Jewish Canadian Youth Model United Nations as a delegate on the special ‘Crisis Committee,’ where students, as opposed to portraying nations on normal Model U.N. committees, act as real life characters during an actual historical event. 

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The topic this year: The Troubles in Northern Ireland, an undeclared civil war between catholic Irish nationalists and protestant British unionists from the 1960s to the late 90s. My character: United Kingdom Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the ‘Iron Lady,’ who was known for cultural insensitivity and a particularly bad record during the actual crisis. 
I’ve foregone seeing Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” because I thought this film, detailing the city in the early 1960s at the beginning of the crisis, would make me too sentimental for the catholic cause. But Branagh’s film, which shows the Troubles from the point of view of young catholic schoolboy Buddy (Jude Hill), is not really about the conflict, but a coming-of-age story so reminiscent of A24 it could just as well have been directed by Greta Gerwig.
“Belfast” follows Buddy through the Troubles’ tumultuous early months in the titular city, as Protestants riot against Catholics, the army moves into his otherwise quiet neighborhood, and his father (Jamie Dornan) duels the non-intimidating head of a street gang, the film’s main antagonist, as told in a series of small vignettes. Branagh blankly portrays Protestants as the sole villains of the conflict, as looters and idiots who criticize Catholicism for being “a religion of fear,” and then send their children to be lectured by a fire-breathing preacher about eternal suffering and salvation. 
Do not go into “Belfast” expecting to be educated about Northern Ireland and its complicated past, as the only history it portrays is incomplete and heavily skewed, neglecting the Troubles’ actual reality as being a conflict fought by both Catholics and Protestants, not a war of oppression between English colonists and Irish natives. 
The film reflects the modern-day perception of the Troubles, that it is yet another story of the decaying British Empire attempting to hold onto its last imperial possessions. While I do not necessarily disagree with Branagh’s assessment, the Troubles are such a complicated conflict, formed from nearly a millennium of history and atrocities committed by both sides, that to attempt portraying it in a film only leads to “Belfast” feeling woefully incomplete. “Belfast” fails to be a good representation of the Troubles, as it completely neglects addressing the conflict which forms the film’s background.
The actual main story of “Belfast”, if there is a main story, is about Buddy’s various experiences, told in chopped-up pieces, growing up as his family struggles with poverty, his grandfather with a persistent illness and him with the inevitability of having to leave Belfast to escape the conflict. 
Buddy, who Hill blandly plays as a typical precocious schoolboy, is a static character; he does not change at all throughout the film, only learning to accept his family’s eventual move to
England for his father’s new job. Buddy has no character beyond innocence, no conflict besides trying to get a girlfriend and a good grade on his math test (both of which are introduced and then immediately resolved) and no reason to be the main character of this film. His father, an ambitious former criminal who yearns to do the best for his family, is the most interesting character in “Belfast”— the film, which only features his character peripherally, should have been completely focused on him. 
Instead, Branagh presents his film from a child’s point of view, in an obvious retelling of his own life story. This makes watching “Belfast” like hearing seven different true stories from one person all at once, all presented in chronological order and unusually tinted in black and white. It is disorienting and, while not difficult to follow, it is impossible to see while watching why each individual interconnected tale matters at all in the grand scheme of things, if there even is any. Despite the film attempting to connect its many different plot threads in a climactic riot scene at the end of the film, nothing is resolved and no lasting message is conveyed.
If there is an actual plot throughout these bits-and-pieces of a childhood, I couldn’t tell, but telling a story or educating people about the Troubles does not seem to be Branagh’s point; actually, there doesn’t seem to be any point. “Belfast” is a movie about nothing that ends without leaving any lasting impression. It is a non-movie. 
No wonder it is Oscar-nominated. 
5/10

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