McDonald’s short hit for Hollywood more than just luck
From The Artist to Hugo on through Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Midnight in Paris, there’s a hankering after the past.
Dublin director Peter McDonald, whose film Pentecost is nominated in the Live Action Short Film category, is doing his bit for the remembrance of things past on behalf of sport, his excellent 11-minute work achieving the impossible: encouraging the viewer to have a soft spot for Liverpool during this torrid period of bad press for the club.
McDonald brings us back to the late 1970s, when the Catholic Church still held an iron grip on Irish society and when, across the channel, Liverpool was tightening its grip on European football.
For McDonald’s young protagonist, Damien Lynch, an altar boy who has made the cardinal error of knocking over a priest with an incense holder during mass, Liverpool’s 1977 run towards their first European Cup is both escape and inspiration.
The final in Rome’s Stadio Olimpico is the Wednesday after Pentecost Sunday. Damien’s father has warned his son that any more shameful errors like that one will mean he won’t be able to watch his heroes take on Borussia Mönchengladbach. Not unlike a scene that you’d find in Father Ted, McDonald creates a beautifully lit comic set-piece, a dressing room of altar boys getting psyched up for the big mass.
“It started with an image in my head,” the Mount Merrion-born writer/director told me on Monday as he prepared for an exciting week in Hollywood.
“A group of angelic looking altar boys sitting on a bench in a wood-panelled sacristy with light streaming in. A sacristan was circling them and giving them a pep talk in advance of an important mass. It was such a visual image and so rich with drama and humour I thought, there is a great short film in there. I let it fester. It wouldn’t go away. I scratched away at the image and I realised it had to be about a boy in that room.
“I was an altar boy in 1970s Catholic Ireland and being on the altar is a very public event, exposing. You don’t want to get it wrong. The bigger the mass, the bigger the pressure. Just like a football game. I am also a Liverpool fan. So I drew on those experiences to create the young hero of Damian. The story started to emerge. The juxtaposition of the world of a small parish with the behind-the-scenes machinations of a second division football club just grew and grew. It was funny and it emphasised the high stakes involved.”
Legendary commentator Barry Davies is credited as ‘narrator’ but it’s more accurate to describe his contribution as ‘soundtrack’, his soft, understated tones accentuating the Anfield crowd, names like Keegan and Kennedy cascading across the attractive colour tones of the cinematography — a goal from that ultimately successful European run greeted with one simple outburst of admiration: “Oh yes!”
It’s a reverential snapshot of late 1970s Ireland despite its satirical treatment of the Catholic Church’s power. McDonald seems to argue that there’s room for everyone: overbearing fathers, compassionate mothers, sport-loving men of the cloth eager to give the altar boy one more chance as well as stuffy archbishops who are just as necessary, if only to nurture the conditions for punk-era rebellion.
Of course well over a year before all this Oscar excitement, the 55th Corona Cork Film Festival named Pentecost Best Irish Short Film of 2010.
“I could not be happier with the success of the film. For the piece to connect with so many people and to eventually end up with an Oscar nomination is a dream come true as a filmmaker. When you set out to make a film you are so concentrated on the craft of making the film and telling the story on every level you have no idea what kind of life it will have.
It is very gratifying to know that it connects with people and to see it screened to a receptive audience is very affirming as a storyteller. That is what it is all about.
“I must say that the final product is the result of a massive collaboration between myself and host of very talented Irish cast and crew members who all brought their ‘A game’.”
Pentecost will compete for the big prize with Northern Ireland entry The Shore, a short that stars Thurles-born Kerry Condon.
She can also be seen in the HBO series ‘Luck’, a horse racing drama which started on Irish screens on Sky Atlantic this past weekend. It’s not the easiest to follow but well worth a punt.
* john.w.riordan@gmail.com Twitter: JohnWRiordan
