'71 (15.)
Directed by Yann Demange. Starring Jack O'Connell, Paul Anderson, Sam Reid, Sean Harris, Charlie Murphy, and Sam Hazeldine. 99 mins
Watching this bold and gripping British flick I was reminded of a quote by one of the original alternative stand up comics, Andy De La Tour. Regarding the then active “Troubles” in Northern Ireland he commented, 'if only we'd admit there has been a war going on over there, just think of the war films we could've had: Kenneth More on the bow of a war ship sailing down the Falls Road, “Paddies damn quiet tonight, No 1”.' Well here is that war film and it's a pretty good one at that.
I think it was inevitable that when it finally came, our Northern Ireland war film would take its model not from WWII heroics but Nam uncertainties, an Apocalypse Then. I'd have expected a Platoon-like Tour of Duty film, a naïve young squaddie growing up fast as he is exposed to the furious insanities of sectarianism. '71 doesn't have the time for that though. Instead '71 offers a lost-behind-enemy-lines scenario with a radically compressed time scale: Private Hook (O'Connell) gets to experience the full scale of the Troubles all on his first full day in the province. During a riot he is separated from his unit and has to try and make it out of the catholic area alive. As such it is a mirror image of one of the best films about sectarianism, Carol Reed's Odd Man Out in which James Mason's wounded IRA man tries to allude the police in Belfast.
The plot really amounts to an escalating series of out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire situations and towards the end the plotting gets quite schematic as it aligns all the various conflicting factions for their final dramatic ironies. Any film set in this period with a British soldier as a protagonist is going to catch some flack but the script's attempts to achieve balance seem fair and honest, rather than even-handed out of convenience.
What really impresses is the way director Demange (whose previous work was all for the small screen most recently Top Boy) captures the sense of time and place: all those grim terrace streets with boarded up windows and streets illuminated by burning cars; children playing on the street as armoured cars pull up to raid a house. It is a little cold blooded to say it, but the hideous juxtaposing of the everyday and the monstrous make Northern Ireland obvious and unique cinematic material. It's a warzone that coexists with everyday life. The surreal landscape bears comparison with Full Metal Jacket, a dystopian sic fi films which take place after society has collapsed, or even a dressed down Clockwork Orange.
Directed by Yann Demange. Starring Jack O'Connell, Paul Anderson, Sam Reid, Sean Harris, Charlie Murphy, and Sam Hazeldine. 99 mins
Watching this bold and gripping British flick I was reminded of a quote by one of the original alternative stand up comics, Andy De La Tour. Regarding the then active “Troubles” in Northern Ireland he commented, 'if only we'd admit there has been a war going on over there, just think of the war films we could've had: Kenneth More on the bow of a war ship sailing down the Falls Road, “Paddies damn quiet tonight, No 1”.' Well here is that war film and it's a pretty good one at that.
I think it was inevitable that when it finally came, our Northern Ireland war film would take its model not from WWII heroics but Nam uncertainties, an Apocalypse Then. I'd have expected a Platoon-like Tour of Duty film, a naïve young squaddie growing up fast as he is exposed to the furious insanities of sectarianism. '71 doesn't have the time for that though. Instead '71 offers a lost-behind-enemy-lines scenario with a radically compressed time scale: Private Hook (O'Connell) gets to experience the full scale of the Troubles all on his first full day in the province. During a riot he is separated from his unit and has to try and make it out of the catholic area alive. As such it is a mirror image of one of the best films about sectarianism, Carol Reed's Odd Man Out in which James Mason's wounded IRA man tries to allude the police in Belfast.
The plot really amounts to an escalating series of out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire situations and towards the end the plotting gets quite schematic as it aligns all the various conflicting factions for their final dramatic ironies. Any film set in this period with a British soldier as a protagonist is going to catch some flack but the script's attempts to achieve balance seem fair and honest, rather than even-handed out of convenience.
What really impresses is the way director Demange (whose previous work was all for the small screen most recently Top Boy) captures the sense of time and place: all those grim terrace streets with boarded up windows and streets illuminated by burning cars; children playing on the street as armoured cars pull up to raid a house. It is a little cold blooded to say it, but the hideous juxtaposing of the everyday and the monstrous make Northern Ireland obvious and unique cinematic material. It's a warzone that coexists with everyday life. The surreal landscape bears comparison with Full Metal Jacket, a dystopian sic fi films which take place after society has collapsed, or even a dressed down Clockwork Orange.
