(Next Review: Spencer. A movie about one Christmas with Princess Diana and the Royal Family).

 

Kenneth Branagh’s movie “Belfast” is a charming, powerful, and sometimes romanticized love letter to his birthplace Belfast. It’s an especially good movie for this grinding time.

I think I rarely have, if ever, seen better-acting than that of Jude Hill, a bright, cheerful, and adorable nine-year-old and a fictional version of  Branagh, whose family left Belfast when he was a child to move to London.

That alone is a good reason to see it.

The movie is soft; most people cried more than once, including me (and Maria, who cried several times). It is a tear-jerker for sure, especially in every scene that Judy Dench, who played Buddy (Jode Hill) formidable and loving Granny was in.

She was just amazing. So was Hill and Carian Higgins, who plays Pop, his grandfather.

The family is struggling to stay together in violent, poor, and bitterly divided Belfast at the start of what is commonly known as “The Troubles.” Buddy’s family is Protestant. Half of their neighborhood is Catholic. When the father (Jamie Dorman) refuses to turn against his neighbors, he and his family find themselves in grave danger.

The idyllic feel of post-war Belfast in the movie – people playing, greeting each other, dancing, and talking in the neighborhood –  is shattered when its Protestant residents riot against their Catholic neighbor to “cleanse” the community.

But Branagh isn’t out to re-create The Troubles, although it hovers ominously and continuously in the background.

Buddy plays with his cousins, flirts with his soon-to-be girlfriend, watches Star Trek and John Wayne (and Gary Cooper) classics on tiny televisions, and visits with his very loving grandparents every day after school.

His father is away working in London much of the time, and that is also working to tear the family apart.

Their marriage is severely strained when he tells the family he wants them all to leave Belfast for a safer and better life in England. His wife and sons don’t want to go. Their attachment to Belfast and their family is strong.

Jodie has a new girlfriend who is Catholic, he insists he will marry her one day. There is no doubt that he will. This is a child who knows who he is.

The sound track is songs by Van Morrison, it does not get any better than that.

If times were hard, the movie is primarily soft, very soft. The family had a long list of severe difficulties and dangers, but the curious thing about the film is that pain and glamour walk hand in hand and take turns.

I think Branagh was using one to balance the other, and mostly – not always –  it worked very well.

So many of the scenes are idyllic, and Branagh unaccountably broke the mood by inserting a clumsy (Three Months Later) graphic towards the film’s emotional heart. The time-lapse could easily have been explained by one of the actors.

The movie is mainly shot in black and white, and sometimes in color.  A few times, it seemed that Branagh, who wrote and directed the film,  got the colors backward.

I like the movie very much  – it is poignant and affecting, the acting was remarkable – and I recommend it highly for ages above eight or nine.  It was sometimes heartbreaking, there are many people in it you will root for. A few times, I thought Branagh laid the Irish blarney on a little thick, and the dialogue was sometimes difficult for me to understand.

But the movie never felt false and often touched the heart.

There is some violence in the movie, but the film never really digs into the conflict raging in the city.

Branagh moved from Belfast to England when he was nine. That is the story he wanted to tell.

(Soreass Meter. 2/12 out of five.)