Movie review: The personal and the political are inextricably bound in Belfast

Belfast - a Kenneth Branagh film

★★★★☆

Employing a child’s-eye view of the Troubles is something of a masterstroke by writer-director Kenneth Branagh, whose Belfast (12A), which opens in August 1969, is a semi-autobiographical account of an idyllic childhood rudely interrupted by riots, bombs and pogroms.

Young Buddy (Jude Hill) is a happy-go-lucky chap as he skips merrily up and down his terraced street, where Catholic and Protestant families are next-door neighbours. 

His Pa (Jamie Dornan) is frequently away working in England, leaving his Ma (Caitriona Balfe) to fret about unpaid bills and Buddy’s wilder older brother, Will (Lewis McAskie). 

Happily, Buddy has his Pop (Ciarán Hinds) and Granny (Judi Dench) to keep him anchored — until, that is, the fateful day when a Protestant mob comes storming into their street to demand that the Catholic families leave.

We see much of the story from Buddy’s point-of-view, which allows the naive child to ask many of the questions that a contemporary audience unfamiliar with the origins of the Troubles might be asking itself; and Buddy’s small stature also comes in very useful when it comes to emphasising the threat of the rampaging mob, say, or the height of the looming barricades that are swiftly erected at either end of the street.

Beautifully shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos — the colour-scheme blending in with Buddy’s beloved old Westerns, and most poignantly when he watches High Noon — Belfast is a film in which the personal and the political are inextricably bound, and especially when Buddy’s family begin to contemplate abandoning war-torn Belfast for a more peaceful life elsewhere.

It’s a strong cast, with young Jude Hill and Catriona Balfe in particularly good form, although Ciarán Hinds steals every scene he’s in with his turn as the ailing old grandfather who is Buddy’s de facto best friend.

(cinema release)