![]() ![]() ![]() His own father is a ‘deep thinker’, who has seen a bit of the world and quotes Yeats, while his mother, played by Judi Dench (with an erratic Belfast accent), is enduringly supportive. Pa isn’t a one-off: this is a film about family values and how they are passed on. When a loyalist gunman pressures him to join up or pay protection money, he refuses. ‘There is no our side and their side on our street,’ Pa tells his sons. But the joke points to a deeper resistance to sectarianism. A British soldier quips that he hopes Pa isn’t a joiner in one of the new armed groups: there was a UVF bombing campaign in 1969 and it was the year the Provisional IRA was founded. Buddy, the Branagh figure, played by Jude Hill, lives with his older brother and hard-pressed mother (Catríona Balfe), while his father (Jamie Dornan) comes and goes: he works as a joiner in England. ![]() Though the representation of events is spare and often stylised, the film catches the impact of the crisis not just on smashed and burned terraced houses but on the fabric of everyday decency.Īt the heart of Belfast is a version of Branagh’s own Protestant family in 1969. Neighbourhood vigilantes are replaced by paramilitaries and the British army. Paving stones are lifted to barricade the end of the street. ![]() ’s Belfast is set in the early months of the Troubles, in a mixed working-class district that is cleared of its Catholic residents by a loyalist mob. ![]()
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