Revenge as cold comfort in new movie about the Irish famine

Black 47 has an Irish man wreaking havoc among those who evicted his family during the Famine, writes Esther McCarthy.

It’s a movie about the most devastating event in Irish history, a story that would be a huge challenge to bring to the big screen. Little wonder, then, that Black 47 director Lance Daly was amazed the Great Famine had never been

dramatised in cinema — but says after making the film, he could understand why.

Set during the worst year of the Famine, Daly’s project drew a starry cast and widespread interest. But it was by far the most ambitious and large-scale movie he has ever taken on.

“I’m always overly optimistic and naive going into these things and think: ‘Oh we can do it. We’ll overcome that’. And in this case it was definitely a list longer than any we could anticipate,” he said.

“It’s simple — all of the things that you would think are tricky are in it. It’s an ensemble cast. We have children and animals. We’ve a movie in two languages (various characters speak in Irish throughout the film). We have real gunpowder, stunts.

"Then we have the Famine and the responsibility of getting that right, which sort of grew as we were doing it. The dread of how awful it would be to do something about something so important that’s never been done, and miss the mark.”

Daly, whose previous movies include the comedy Life’s a Breeze and the widely praised drama Kisses, has largely hit the mark with Black 47.

A revenge thriller which seeks to entertain while never forgetting the tragedy at its roots, the film centres on Feeney, an Irish soldier hardened by fighting for the British army overseas.

On returning home to the west of Ireland in 1847, he is horrified by the devastation and disorder that has left his mother starved and his brother hanged as the Famine takes its grip.

Enraged, he sets about avenging their deaths, working his way of the hierarchy of those he feels are responsible. Hannah (Hugo Weaving), an experienced tracker who used to fight with Feeney in Afghanistan, heads a team tasked with stopping him.

The cast also includes Jim Broadbent, Cork actress Sarah Greene, Barry Keoghan and Stephen Rea’s canny Conneely, who at one point surveys the striking landscape and dryly says: “Maybe people would place more value on beauty if they could eat it.”

“He’s quite adept at surviving in a way,” says Rea of his character. “He’s hanging in with the Brits and he’s getting a meal at the very least. But he’s also observing and maybe absorbing the history to explain it later. There were people who said: ‘Don’t let them come through our townland’ when they were walking to the boat. ‘Don’t let them near us’.

“But he does mark the card of the landlord about his responsibility in a nice way.”

HELL AND CONNACHT

Rea vividly remembers filming on location in Connemara and Wicklow during the winter months. Did the tough conditions help give a sense of time and place?

“You always need good acting, and I’m not convinced bitter cold provokes good acting! It may provoke a kind of internal fury,” he smiles.

“It’s fine, because it’s over now, and the miracle of seeing it transformed into a wonderful film. The greatest shot in the movie, I think, is when the carts roll out of the yard laden with grain, going to the seaports, and the people are standing there starving. That’s just it, you know? That just says it all, really.”

“I don’t know how anybody survived if you were in 1847,” added Daly of that period. “If you put me out fully clad now, up a mountain somewhere in Connemara, I’d die overnight. I still find it a stretch to figure out how human beings could suffer that much.”

Throughout the making of the film, Daly felt a growing sense of responsibility to those who lived, died and emigrated during that time.

“The Famine wasn’t a totally chaotic time. A lot of the historians were at pains to say to me: ‘There was no breakdown of law and order. It was just people quietly starving, and dying, and leaving’.

"There are flare-ups of resistance, which is what this film is about. But actually the story of The Famine is essentially one where the rule of law was enforced mercilessly and people just slowly lost the strength to resist. It’s at that point that you realise you’re nearly starved and you can’t really fight back.

“There’s two ideas - you either tax somebody really heavily and give them loads of services, or you leave people alone but they kind of have to fend for themselves. In this case, you tax people really heavily and you give them no services and they have to fend for themselves.

“The relationship between the British and Irish is more in the film, I would like to think, depicted as the relationship between rich and poor. The divide is more along class lines.

"There’s also rich Irish people who profit, I tried to do all the shades. I think we’re very moderate. It’s just that the essence of the story is essentially very political. What was important to me was not to seem so biased that it undermined the story. The injustice of it tells its own.”

[media]https://youtu.be/bt_lnhguHpg[/media]

ANGRY WRATH

As Feeney’s hit-list increases, more and more foes feel the wrath of his fury. Again, the director makes interesting choices here, often opting to show the build-up and aftermath of a violent act rather than the violence itself. It’s something he thought a great deal about.

“It’s probably a question of balance. It’s a question I was constantly asking myself: what’s important in doing this film? Just as we have people suffering from famine and from fever, to not be voyeuristic about that.

“It would just seem a little odd to me to be voyeuristic about the violence, or in some way to fetishise the violence, you know? I think it’s the results of the violence or the implications of it that are really what’s important.

“I think (it’s about) the moment when he sees his time is up, and we’re on his eyes, we’re not on the actual

violent act.”

Daly says a revenge story was the most interesting way to bring this film to the big screen, but always felt a responsibility towards this terrible time in our history.

“It’s sort of sacred ground. There’s a history to this story that’s sacred ground and we’ve tried to treat it so. If you suddenly appear to be mercenary in some way, trying to advance your filmmaking or the reach of your audience, then you’re monopolising something that belongs to everybody, I think. You’re sort of aware this is every Irish person’s story, not just mine, to tell.”

Black 47 opens in cinemas today.