The experience of watching Belfast is kinda how I’d imagine it would be like trying to listen to a story from Abe Simpson, you know, the grandpa from The Simpsons, where it veers from one thread to another, not really building each emotional moment so much as giving us glimpses of numerous signifying personal touchstones in the past. I know that sounds like a pretty bad insult, but Belfast is actually quite good and charming and even moving, at times. The way it rides this rhythm like you’re being told stories is quite compelling and it adds to the nostalgic atmosphere that writer/director, Kenneth Branagh, is going for.
The semi-autobiographical film follows a young boy named Buddy (Jude Hill), who lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland with his working class protestant family in the late 60s in the midst of the Troubles wreaking havoc across the city. Instead of having a traditional coming-of-age plot, it weaves from one moment to another, from his experience having a crush at school, to being tempted into taking part in some of the riots by impressionable older children, to his time being spent with his grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds), to potentially leaving Belfast so the family can be closer to where the father (Jamie Dornan) works.
This is clearly very personal to Branagh, and that personal connection really shines through. I love how the film lingers on a lot of the everyday details of life growing up in Belfast, and it’s captured by cinematographer, Haris Zambarloukos, and editor, Úna Ní Dhonghaíle, in a really fascinating way. Not only is the film largely in black-and-white, but it takes a very subjective point-of-view in the way it’s shot and sequenced. It does everything it can to capture everything from the perspective of a young boy who might not totally understand everything going on around him.
As a result, the film can come across as simplistic or not as meaty as it could be, but the simplicity is the charm, and it’s why the film works as well as it does. It’s driven strongly by not only the emotions experienced by the characters, but also the emotions of the unseen narrator that we’re watching this through the lens of. It’s not purely looking at the past through Rose colored glasses, so much as it is embracing all the good and bad that one experienced in the past that made you what you are today. It’s a theme that is largely left unsaid, but it’s an underlying idea that is the clear driving force of the story.
It is also quite appropriately named as well. While the main character may be Buddy, this is a film more about a place and time. Belfast, or at least Branagh’s memory of Belfast, is a very well realized one, in a sense not the most realistically staged, but one that shows his fondness for the place and the people within it. It’s very much about the idea of home, and how home can shape you, and how you can carry a place within you no matter where you might be. And it also deals in the fear of having to leave home, and potentially not connect with people you meet in your new place. This was touched on by a really terrific moment with Buddy’s mother (Caitriona Balfe).
Speaking of, the performances here are great all around. Balfe practically walks away with the movie as the mother who is trying her best to raise Buddy and his older brother, Will (Lewis McAskie) while the dad is off working; she naturally gets some of the biggest emotional beats. Dornan is also worth noting as well, he makes a surprisingly strong impression as the occasionally absent but loving father who helps bring Buddy to become aware of the magic of the movies. Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds are both a total delight as well, even when their roles feel on paper to be just for presenting all the lessons learned and to manufacture all the tears that the film wants to draw from its audience.
If there’s one thing you can’t say about a film like Belfast, it’s that it doesn’t wear its heart on its sleeve. In one sense, it’s a nakedly sentimental exercise for an established filmmaker to look upon their own past, but in another, it provides a window to a specific place and time that I found fascinating and easy to get swept up in. Calling it a “crowd pleaser” as I had seen it described as feels a bit reductive and simplifies a lot of the rough edges that the film has and explores, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t any less charming and rousing as an overall cinematic experience. I wouldn’t necessarily call it one of Kenneth Branagh’s very best, even as someone who is generally a fan, but it is one I am very fond of, and found a lot to love in.
Belfast is now out in theaters.