Oscar buzz: Is Arracht the little Irish movie that could?
Siobhan O'Kelly in Arracht; right, director Tom Sullivan.
Oscar buzz has been building for Irish-language feature Arracht ('Monster') ever since it was submitted as Ireland's entry for Best International Feature Film. Last week the Academy Awards confirmed it was one of 93 films in contention - and we’ll discover on February 9 if it makes a shortlist of 15 chosen by voters.
As far as writer/director Tom Sullivan is concerned, personally and professionally Arracht is already a win. Praise has been universal for his powerful drama, a thriller set as the Great Hunger looms. He’s thrilled to be in the Oscars conversation, but the experience of making the film, and the reception, has been special.
“A very good friend of mine once said: ‘always be prepared for nothing as an artist’," laughed the filmmaker when asked about awards-season chatter. “It’s about applying yourself to what you can control, which is my writing, and trying to get the next project up and running. But beyond that, I can't really think about the Oscars because there's 92 probably really good films on that list. We do have a chance and we are in the race.
“I've always watched foreign language films and foreign language television. And I've always thought with the Irish language, that there was a real opportunity there, through film and television, for Irish people to engage with our language again. The people who would say to you: ‘I'd love to learn Irish, I would love to be able to speak it’. I think there's a whole audience of people in Ireland that are willing to engage with the Irish language, but the quality of the stuff just hasn't really been there for them."
Sullivan already feels like he has achieved something with Arracht. "
“I's a film that has a really good chance when it goes into cinemas, particularly after all this amazing press we got because of the Oscar race thing. Even if we don't make it on to the 15, people know about it now.”
Arracht is a beautifully crafted thriller which centres on Colman (an excellent Dónall Ó Héalai) who fishes and farms to provide for his family. As rumours of an imminent potato blight loom, he’s asked to take in Patsy (Dara Devany) who has recently returned from Britain. A threatened hike in rents by landlords is putting further pressure on people. But following a violent sequence of events, Colman is forced to flee his community and take shelter on a nearby island, where he meets a young orphan named Kitty.
Sullivan’s love of the Irish language was fostered by two young teachers who set up an Irish-language school near his home in Tallaght. They would bring students on trips to Connemara, sparking what became a life-long affinity with the west and the language.
Following a number of award-winning shorts, Arracht was born and Sullivan scouted several locations, including West Cork and Kerry. But when he first arrived at Leitir Mealláin (Lettermullan) in Connemara, he knew he had found Arracht’s home.
“It's the island back from Carraroe if you drive back about 30 or 40 minutes. It's where you see on the map of Ireland, it all breaks up into little islands, and there are bridges across. But once you get past that section, the landscape is even very different from the rest of Connemara in that it's super exposed. It's like the bones of the landscape are jutting through the bog and through the top soil. It was our set designer who'd said we’ve got to shoot this out there, a guy called Padraig O'Neill. He'd been out there working on Song of Granite.
“When I stepped out of the car, I was completely blown away by how perfect this place was because I knew the landscape was going to be a character in the film. When we found that place it just all started to work. And the people of Leitir Mealláin, they just rolled in. It was amazing. You know, that's what's wonderful about filmmaking, it's collaborative.”
Sullivan had long established a career as an actor, starring in shows like The Clinic and more recently, Finding Joy. But acting is a precarious career, freelance by its nature, and in his mid-thirties, he decided to turn to writing and directing.
“I just found the work wasn't enough,” he said. “I wasn't getting enough work. And I wasn't getting roles that I could engage with, or get my teeth into. It was all piecemeal. I went through a few years of just doing very small amounts of work, and also, financially, it became quite a struggle. So all those pressures were on me, and I just found I just wasn't happy being an actor anymore.
“It was a prompt from my mother actually, she asked me why I didn't write anymore. She said: ‘You used to write all the time when you were a kid’.”
There’s an simplicity to the writing in Arracht that makes it all the more powerful. Was that how he set out to approach the screenplay?
“I'm writing another feature at the moment. And this seems to be my style - I overload stuff at the beginning, with the first draft, and I think maybe a lot of writers do this. And then it's a process of elimination, of getting rid of things.
“I think it's about economy, film is about economy, and you need to start losing things as much as you can out of it. If you can lose it, do lose it would generally be my rule of thumb. Also, because it was a low budget film, we just didn't have the money to shoot anything that we weren't going to use. So everything had to earn its place. I think that was a good discipline. If you get rid of it, it'll work its way back in if it's good enough and it needs to be there. They're the kind of films that I would like to make, because I think they leave room then for people to engage. I think an audience leans into a film like that.”
In less bizarre times, Arracht would have enjoyed a lengthy run of some of the world’s top film festivals in the run-up to awards season. Instead, Sullivan has found himself on Zoom as most festivals and events go virtual.
“In another time, we would have been going to these festivals. But then, of course, you quickly correct yourself and go, well, you're lucky to be doing any of this, that you got to make a film and that it's going to festivals.
“It would have been nice to go to LA to maybe do some meetings and see people. This has just been brilliant, on the other hand, for getting my name out there as a filmmaker, and hopefully, it will help to get the next one made.”
- Arracht will be released by Breakout Pictures this year. The Oscar nominaitons will be announced on Feb 9, while the Golden Globe nominations are out on Wednesday, Feb 3
