A fan of Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” was a test for writing in a new autobiographical genre for him, and the test proved quite successful: it was recognized as “Best British Film” at the BAFTA. It won the Golden Globe for best screenplay and was awarded an Oscar (also for the original screenplay).
He probably had many reasons for claiming victory in the major category: a warm welcome from both critics and the audience (Belfast, meanwhile, received the Audience Award at the Toronto Film Festival, the results almost always matching his view from the Academy), five so far. An authoritative director who has claimed an Oscar once, a strong cast, and themes that were surprisingly hits for their time.
Kenneth Branagh decided to shoot his own childhood and his hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland’s main city, which in 1969 had become the center of conflicts between Catholics and Protestants. The director himself was nine years old at that time – a boy who had been fighting in the garden a minute ago with a wooden shield and a sword, suddenly faced this battle in reality. The director’s decision to show things in Belfast from below, from a child’s point of view, is of course quite understandable: first of all, this is his personal story, and it also adds a playful tone and a childlike naivety to the whole narrative.
His life isn’t about war, it’s about his desire to be the perfect student at school to sit in the same row with the girl he loves, the movies he watches on the big screen, street football. and childish jokes with his cousin. An adult is placed, as if against his own world: parents swear by unpaid taxes and discuss moving to another country, father constantly disappears to work in England, here, at home, he is offered to join radical Protestants or become a house owner. Her enemies, the mother – are worried about an accent (Kenneth Branagh, by the way, faced the same problem after moving to England), and the street of the town where Buddy lives with his family is blocked by a barricade. Still, life goes on and music plays on the same street, and the protagonist’s grandparents dance a love song and dance in the kitchen, distracted from answering his grandson’s question about love.
Overall, there are many contrasts in Belfast, both in content and form: the film opens with colorful panoramas of modern Belfast, but as the story begins, it turns black and white and is set back more than 50 years, with colors only with a movie Buddy watched with his family. returns to the screen. Some write color schemes, such as references to Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” and Alfonso Cuaron’s “Rome,” and not to the author’s handwriting, but somehow they achieved the goal—to make screen memories and convey nostalgia for the past past—they hit.
Likewise, she works on her own for a whole ensemble of actors: Jamie Dornan plays one of her best roles here, Katrina Balfe (Outlander) perfectly copes with a strict and strong mother, becomes Ciarán Hinds (Game of Thrones). It embodies everything enchanting this movie has had since Jude Hill debuted as Buddy, and Judi Dench and her character’s strong spirit earned her an Oscar nomination. And it is impossible to separate any of them – not because no one is remembered, but because the family is here as a single organism.
However, Belfast captures not with perfect gameplay or black and white plans, but with key motifs that are more relevant than ever and resonate with everyone. Victims of an external threat, the main characters now and then find themselves faced with a choice on which their entire future lives depend: go or stay, take up arms, resist or go with the flow? For nine-year-old Buddy, such questions may still be foreign, but at the same time he becomes an involuntary participant in events and charts a “good” and forked path in his album, for example, after the priest’s sermon. “his bad sides. It seems that when his family is with him, all will surely end well: his father and older brother will show up at the right time to save him from the bad guys, and grandfather, as he himself says, can be found everywhere. Thus, Belfast from an autobiographical drama of an entire nation against the backdrop of turmoil, people It becomes a warm and sincere film about
Source: People Talk
