Tom Dunne: Here's why Kneecap is already my favourite film of the year

To say I was impressed by Kneecap would be an understatement  

A scene from the Kneecap

Your reaction to Kneecap – my film of the year - will largely depend on when you were born. If you are a “Ceasefire Baby” – born after the Good Friday Agreement – well, I can’t really talk for you. However, if like me, you were born “some time before that” then strap yourself in!

Prepare for a white-knuckle ride. Prepare to be challenged, prepare to want the film paused so you can ask questions or google certain historic facts, and prepare to repeatedly say “No! You can’t! Please!” out loud, to nobody in particular.

I mean where do you start? Is Michael Fassbinder’s character really “kinda loosely based” on Bobby Sands? Have we already reached a point in our history where that is okay? Is one of the family homes a 1916 theme park? Is that really Dev’s photo on the wall beside the classic — every Catholic home must have one — Sacred Heart of Jesus?

And what era is it? It’s really supposed to be 2019 but is that not the RUC as opposed to the PSNI? Are the Troubles really over? Are there actual Gaeltacht ghettos in Belfast? Are they really going to take the piss out of an IRA offshoot? Oh, and before I stop asking questions, is that a responsible way to portray casual drug use?

Sorry, final one: And how is it, when you combine all of the above, that you end up with a film that makes you want to jump out of your seat screaming “Hallelujah”? How do you combine all of that and end up with something so utterly joyous?

I watched a screening in a room of film reviewing professionals. They did not break into spontaneous applause when it ended. I won’t lie, I don’t know how they kept it together. I clapped long and enthusiastically.

My own Northern Ireland experiences are not insubstantial. My band, Something Happens, played numerous shows in the north from around 1987 to literally the day before the Good Friday Agreement. We stayed in the Europa Hotel – the most bombed hotel in Europe — on the actual day of the agreement.

In the late 1980s we were guarded by machine-gun carrying British soldiers as we loaded our gear into a metal club in Portadown. Another time a British soldier recognised us and sang a bit of our tune ‘Hello, Hello’ to us.

They never tired of our keyboardist’s name: Patrick FitzPatrick. “Are you taking the mick, Paddy?” they would ask as they told him to step out of the van. He was from Belfast. He hated them. He said nothing.

We flew into Belfast the day after two undercover British troops were pulled out of their car and murdered. The city was on a knife’s edge. The gig was pulled, a car rented, and we were urged to drive back to Dublin before dark. It was, to put it mildly, tense.

Is Michael Fassbinder’s character really “kinda loosely based” on Bobby Sands? Picture: Ming Yeung/Getty Images

But not as tense as the night Patrick Kielty supported us at the University of Ulster at Coleraine. He went on in a balaclava. We were too nervous to speak. We simply couldn’t believe he was doing this. But somehow, we all survived.

All of the above pales into insignificance against what you will witness in Kneecap. So, depending on existing predispositions, prepare for a stormy ride.

The scene where Liam Óg (Mo Chara) dressed in an Italia 90 Ireland tracksuit is chased over Tate’s Avenue by an angry Orange Order band will likely live with me for ever. The director Rich Peppiatt calls it their Lawrence of Arabia shot. It is if anything, even more epic.

It was Peppiatt – a very interesting man - who saw a Kneecap gig in 2019 and wondered might there be a story here. They were rapping in Irish and yet the crowd were going crazy. Stormont was collapsing over the Irish Language Act and here were three people reclaiming the language and forging, as he says, “a new and controversial identity from it.” 

He teased out the stories with them, wrote the script, got them acting lessons and secured Michael Fassbinder. “That was the moment we went, oh shit, this is real. We’re making a proper film now.” 

And a proper film it certainly is. The acting is superb, but the Irish language is the real star. It is a language that has struggled in pop music but is completely at home in rap. It is made for rap, and rap for it.

Go see this film.