Gerard McSorley | Through the Shattered Lens

One thing that I’ve come to realize is that Irish-Americans (like myself) have been guilty of idealizing the Irish Republican Army in the past.

We tend to view the IRA as being freedom fighters, battling against the occupation and standing up against religious bigotry. The truth of the matter is that the IRA was a violent organization whose actions often made things even worse for the Catholics in Northern Ireland. While the IRA’s American supporters always tended to present the IRA as plotting actions against the British army, the truth of the matter is that many of the IRA’s victims were Irish citizens who were judged to either be collaborators or to not be properly enthused about the IRA in general. The popular excuse for the IRA’s terrorism is to say that the IRA usually called and gave advanced warning before a bomb went off but really, that’s kind of a weak excuse when you think about it. Really, the only thing that the IRA had going for it was that the British were often just as bad and even more heavy-handed when it came to dealing with the Irish.

In 1993’s In The Name of the Father, Daniel Day-Lewis plays Gerry Conlon, who is sent to London by his father, Giuseppe (Pete Postlethwaite), specifically to keep him from falling victim to the IRA. Of course, once Gerry arrives in London, he supports himself through burglaries and spends most of his time in a state of stoned bliss with his friends. It’s while Gerry is in London that an IRA bomb blows up a pub in Guildford. When Gerry later returns to Belfast, he is promptly arrested and accused of being one of the four people responsible for the bombing.

Gerry protests that he’s innocent and we know that he’s innocent. We know that, when the bomb was placed, Gerry was busy getting high with Paul Hill (John Lynch). Paul has also been arrested and the British police are determined to get a confessions out of both him and Gerry. The interrogation stretches for hours. Though exhausted, Gerry refuses to confess. Suddenly, Inspector Robert Dixon (Corin Redgrave) enters the room. He walks up to Gerry and whispers in his ear that if Gerry doesn’t confess, “I will kill your Da.”

It’s a shocking moment because the threat is delivered without a moment of hesitation on the part of Dixon. Dixon’s voice is so cold and so direct that, when I watched this film, I actually gasped at the line. An exhausted and terrified Gerry confesses. Soon, Gerry is thrown in prison. He’s joined by his sickly father, who has been accused of being a co-conspirator. At first, Gerry resigns himself to never being free again. He meets Joe (Don Baker), who says that he’s the one who set the bomb and that he confessed after Gerry, Giuseppe, Paul Hill, and the other members of the so-called Guildford Four had been given their life sentences. With Giuseppe’s health faltering, Gerry finally steps up and, with the help of an attorney (Emma Thompson), fights for his freedom.

In The Name of the Father is a powerful film, one that was based on a true story. Gerry and his father come to represent every victim of a biased justice system and an authoritarian-minded police force. Gerry starts the movie trapped between the two sides of the Troubles. The IRA doesn’t trust him because he’s not a bomb-thrower. The British distrust him because he’s Irish. Despite his innocence being obvious, Gerry finds himself sent to prison because letting him go would be viewed as a sign of weakness. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a passionate and charismatic performance as the impulsive and somewhat immature Gerry but the film’s heart really belongs to the late Pete Postlethwaite, playing a father who refuses to give up on either his freedom or his son.

In The Name of the Father received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress (for Emma Thompson). That was also the year of Schindler’s List, which took the Oscars for both Picture and Director. Daniel Day-Lewis lost to Philadelphia’s Tom Hanks while Postlethwaite lost to Tommy Lee Jones for The Fugitive and Thompson lost to Anna Paquin for The Piano. 1993 was a good year for movies and the Oscars, though I would have voted for Day-Lewis over Hanks.

Released in 1996, Michael Collins tells the story of the early 20th century struggle of Ireland to gain independence from Britain.

Liam Neeson stars as Michael “Mick” Collins, the revolutionary leader who perfected the use of guerilla warfare against the British and then, in the greatest of ironies, found himself fighting some of his former allies during the Irish Civil War. Aidan Quinn plays Mick’s friend and fellow revolutionary, Harry Boland. Both Harry and Mick fall in love with Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts). Stephen Rea shows up as Ned Broy, a member of the Dublin police department who is inspired by Mick’s words to become a double agent. Charles Dance has a cameo as the fearsome Soames, a British intelligence agent who is sent to Ireland to violently put down the Irish insurgency. Finally, Alan Rickman plays Eamon de Valera, who goes from being one of Mick’s strongest allies to being one of his fiercest rivals. The film follows Collins from the Easter Rising of 1916 to his eventual assassination in 1922, providing a look at the history of Ireland that is as much directed towards those outside of Ireland as those on the inside.

When watching Michael Collins, it helps to have a working knowledge of Irish history. Otherwise, it can occasionally be a bit difficult to keep track of who is angry with who at any particular point in time. Of course, it should be noted that the movie itself is not exactly historically accurate. In the film, the gentle and likable Ned Broy becomes a victim of British bloodlust. In real life, Ned Broy outlived Michael Collins by several decades and died peacefully at the age of 84. For that matter, the film presents Eamon de Valera as being coldly Machiavellian and it suggests that de Valera was jealous of Mick’s popularity. Though both Rickman and director Neil Jordan later said it wasn’t intentional, the film also seems to suggest that de Valera played a role in Collins’s assassination. While Eamon de Valera remains a controversial figure for many reasons (including his neutrality during World War II), Jordan has said that he feels de Valera was not necessarily treated fairly in Michael Collins and indeed, de Valera — who plays as big a role in the founding of the Irish republic as anyone — is portrayed as often being ineffectual and unwilling to truly put himself at risk to fight the British. De Valera’s relationship with Collins was undoubtedly more complex than portrayed in this film but, when one makes a movie for an international audience, nuance is often the first thing that’s abandoned.

Seen today, 29 years after it was released, Michael Collins is an impressively made film that has a few inescapable flaws. It’s gorgeous to look at, full of moody shots of dark Dublin streets. The violence is often shocking and Jordan doesn’t shy away from considering the moral implications of Collins’s guerilla warfare. Michael Collins doesn’t make the mistake of blindly celebrating violence, which would be a valuable lesson for the world’s current crop of self-styled revolutionaries if they were only willing to hear it. Having gotten used to seeing Liam Neeson cast in one generic action film after another, it was interesting to watch Michael Collins and see what a good actor he truly could be. Even in 1996, He was perhaps a few years too old to playing a man who was only 31 when he died but Neeson still plays the role with a ferocious charisma that makes him believable as a leader. His scenes with Aidan Quinn have a joie de vivre that brings out the both in best actors. Alan Rickman is memorably sinister as Eamon de Valera and Stephen Rea’s gentle style makes Ned Broy into a truly tragic figure. That said, the very American Julia Roberts feels miscast as Kitty Kiernan. One gets the feeling that she was cast solely for her box office appeal. Every film, the feeling goes, needs a love story and those love stories need to be between people with familiar faces and Roberts is such a familiar face that her every appearance in the film feels like a distraction from the story being told. That said, the film captures the excitement and danger of being in the middle of history-making events. It’s a historical epic that’s never boring and manages to hold the viewer’s interest.

Michael Collins is ultimately a flawed but entertaining look at the early days of the Irish republic.