“Surprisingly Hilarious, Warm, & Thoughtful” Belfast Review

Kenneth Branagh taps into his childhood experiences to deliver a charming, light-hearted coming of age story with a breakout star in Jude Hill.

**Part of Commander Shipp’s 57th Annual Chicago International Film Festival coverage**

During the 57th annual Chicago International Film Festival, director Kenneth Branagh was in attendance to present Belfast and receive a well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award for his years as a pioneering director and immaculate actor.

Upon receiving his award, Branagh went on to describe why Chicago was one of his favorite places to perform Shakespeare with his trope, detailing how a fantastic audience of young Chicagoan school-goers were bused in from around the city for a performance. He explained that much like audience members in William Shakespeare’s day, the young audience really got into the proceedings, giving a hearty roar and howl after the lines “NOW the hungry lion roars” and “And the wolf behowls the moon” respectively, sung by Puck from the play A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.

Amid the backdrop of the gorgeous Music Box Theatre, this sweet anecdote set the stage for an energetic and rancorous evening as the crowd appreciated every ounce of humor and communal moment baked into the screenplay of Belfast. Branagh had encouraged us to laugh, but I don’t believe any of us truly understand how much of a treat lay in store.

I hesitate to label this film as a comedy cause that betrays the core of his coming-of-age story. And yet, I couldn’t help but laugh, nor could the audience because the screenplay is simply that solid. Buddy (Jude Hill) can deliver a quip, tell a story about his day or worries at school, and in one scene with his grandparents, you’ll have several different lines drop that will make you smile and double over (there’s a great scene of Buddy being scared straight by an over-the-top preacher delivering a sermon early on that proves this point). Sometimes it’s not about the lines, but the hilarity of circumstances, like when he’s drafted into a “gang” by his friends, which seems more nefarious given how the film starts, and later turns out to be two older schoolgirls who simply need help snatching candy from a grocery store.

Belfast is chalk full of these moments; they are well-paced, well-executed, and well-earning of our appreciation and laughter just as director Kenneth Branagh intended.

Jude Hill Amazes

What an amazing find in young actor Jude Hill. He’s charming, sweet, endearing, and infinitely relatable in his role as Buddy. I don’t care to imagine this movie with anyone else in this role because of how well he did. Casting for any role this young is always difficult but Branagh and team a wonderful job in their audition process and how Branagh worked with him on the set. The end result makes it seem like Hill has been making his way into audiences’ hearts for years, not just for the first time. It can be hard enough to pull an earnest performance out of a seasoned performer, which is why the ease at which Hill operates is astounding. If I were ever to make a top ten list of young debut performances, Hill would easily win first – and it wouldn’t even be close.

A Wonderfully Rounded Cast

I’ll get to the rest of the cast in a moment, but I have to start off by harping on how much fun Dame Judi Dench was having during every one of her scenes. As Buddy’s grandmother, she wasn’t in the film a ton, but whenever she was on screen, she was hamming it up in the best way possible. Set opposite of Ciarán Hinds as Buddy’s grandfather, they matched well as the well-worn, endearing couple offering guidance to him and his parents amid the turmoil happening around them. Hinds, well composed to offer words of wisdom to Buddy in their moments together, benefits from having some of the tenderest lines to deliver. If you watched some of the trailers, Hinds moments in them betray how impactful those little conversations will be on the film.

The rest of Buddy’s on-screen family are portrayed by Jamie Dornan as his father (Pa), Caitríona Balfe as his mother (Ma), along with Lewis McAskie as the older brother Will. Regarding the parents, their chemistry is decent but their lifting comes more in how they engage around Buddy and the rest of their small town as they struggle to decide whether they should leave or stay in Belfast.

Shooting Through Buddy and Windows

There’s a great cinematic choice happening as the crucial decisions start playing out, but if you take notice, they are actually there from the beginning: the cinematic perspective is from Buddy’s mind or his eyes. Cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos (who’s worked with Branaugh on a number of his projects since 2007’s Sleuth) creates a number of different effects to create this perspective.

The close-ups are usually angled up and not on direct lines to the adults faces, and when you think about Buddy’s height, the idea here is that it’s coming from his sight. This isn’t a hard and fast rule however, but the effect works.

Even if Buddy isn’t directly in a scene, he’s usually in the fore or background. There’s a scene where he’s tired and asleep on the couch where the camera feels tied to that spot as you try to hear the conversation with Pa and Ma. Another scene shows Ma talking with a family member on a park bench as Buddy plays near by. In this way, it’s simulating the idea of Buddy overhearing or catching part of their conversation without the scene needing to focus on him.

One other great technique that occurs is the use of separation through doors or windows. Many times, Pa or Ma may be chatting with one another, as Pa is outside the house, Ma inside the house, and the camera shows us Buddy running around, oblivious (or sometimes keenly aware) to the tension that’s been setup by this arrangement. It’s a subtle decision, but helps the audience feel connected to the scene as you almost feel like an observer as well as creating or breaking tension between characters when they are the camera’s frame and/or the actual frame of a house.

Trouble with Troubles

If Belfast were a straight up biopic, I would much more understand the criticism leveled at this film regarding its handling of the Troubles subject matter. Boiling down any complex issue into a red vs blue level discourse can do a great disservice to audience members. In this case, the Catholic vs Protestant simplicity barely scratches the historical issues dating back to the 1600s that overlaps with territorial rights, wealth disparity, and state-sponsored/condoned violence exasperated by Ireland’s even more complicated history with England.

Most of these concerns miss the key perspective on which the entire film hinges. Sure, Branagh could have crafted a similarly superb film that focused more on Kenneth/Buddy’s parents so we could see with more specificity the systemic issues that led to that summer’s protests and the years of strife afterwards. But the film is about being a child, having your life turned upside down, how you process complex information, what concepts do you understand at your age, and more.

The entire film works tirelessly to work the issues through Buddy’s eyes so, no, he wouldn’t be able to articulate every dynamic at play, he would be parroting the talking points or buzzwords he heard at his age. Goodness, if our current political climate in various countries around the world has shown us anything, is that the adults in the room barely understand what’s going on. I certainly don’t mind a film that strives to present Buddy’s feelings on the matter without going into too much details.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the Protestant leaders as portrayed are any good. They are straw-man caricatures; easily batted down and weakly constructed for what they are. It may work in a film like this where we’ve accepted a limited perspective, but had this film actually decided to be a fully enmeshed work on the history of the Troubles, it would fallen incredibly short; exasperating a view of history that it’s only because of a vocal few, and not a systemic issue at play.

Conclusion

Branagh brought his entire self to this project, pouring so much of his life into the narrative, which was made easier with a young star on the rise who could emulate the way he felt growing up. That’s no small task and the effort is going to resonate with every audience who see this film, and it they might have a bit of fun along the way. I’m also going to predict, from the buzz I’ve already been hearing, that this film will do very well come award season and it will be well deserved.

Score: 9 out of 10

Oscar Update

While the film didn’t win nearly the amount of Oscars I thought it might (it did get nominations up and down the board), it did win Best Original Screenplay which is a credit to how well Branagh shared a part of himself in the script.

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