Film Review - King of the Travellers (2013)

Director Mark O’Connor bucked the economic trend in 2012 when he arrived at the Galway Film Fleadh with two films to be screened and a manifesto in his pocket. King of the Travellers and Stalker were warmly received with the latter getting most of the attention for its more experimental approach. But it is King of the Travellers that has received a cinema release first and in some ways it is easy to see why. It has more of a conventional plot although the setting itself is unusual.

King of the Travellers tells the story of a feud between the Moorehouse and Powers, two travelling families. Central to all this is John Paul Moorehouse (John Connors) who believes that the Powers family murdered his father when he was a child. His desire for revenge puts him at odds with the head of the Moorehouse clan, his uncle Francis (Michael Collins) who urges peace. There is the further complication of his love for Winnie Powers (Carla Mc Glynn) and his wild half brother Mickey the Bags (Peter Coonan) who urges him on.

O’Connor wears his influences on sleeve with pride here. There are touches of The Godfather, On the Waterfront and in one of the early scenes Gangs of New York. This can be a dangerous game as you run the risk of calling attention to more acclaimed work. But he gets away with it as he grounds it within the authenticity of the traveller experience. But his main influence is Shakespearian, with Romeo & Juliet the main reference here. The first 30 or so minutes are when the film is at its best. The opening scene in a dark room is beautifully shot. Better again is the scene that follows along a motorway. In between there is the credit sequence with astonishing black and white archive footage of travellers set to The Furey's Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile. This is all very good and as previously said the referencing works within the context of the setting.

But after this excellent beginning some problems emerge. The first problem is the issue of non actors in the film. In the dedication for authenticity O’Connor has filled out all the smaller roles with travellers. The problem here is that when they have extended pieces of dialogue, it is flat and unconvincing and threatens to derail the film somewhat. The other main problem is the fact that the film is constricted by its adherence to narrative convention. This essentially means the last 30 minutes become rushed and predictable as the film heads in the obvious direction. What saves the film coming apart is the conviction of the main actors in their parts. Coonan, Collins and Mc Glynn all do very well in their roles with Coonan particularly taking the part and running with it. But it is the sheer force of nature that is John Connors which holds the film together. It is a big burden to carry a film in a first role but he succeeds admirably. I hope to see more of him in the future.

King of the Travellers is a problematic but ultimately decent film which never moves beyond its straightforward narrative. Yet there is a sense with this and Between the Canals that O’Connor is starting to find his cinematic voice. Even by the audacious title alone, Stalker should be an interesting film to see. It was heartening to see this film a couple of days after seeing Pilgrim Hill. If the ambition on show from both these directors carries through it could be an interesting next few years for Irish film.

Film Review - Pilgrim Hill (2013)

‘Making your way in the world today, takes everything you've got’

It was bizarrely appropriate that the advertisements before Pilgrim Hill showed a certain fast food chain’s ad of the happy Irish farmer permanently basked in sunshine as he made his way around his forensically clean farm. Nothing was out of place and it quite frankly looked like the best job in the world. Weirdly there are no sign of any animals either; presumably all happily gone to slaughter to help feed us the wonderful burgers. The first line of the song used (from Cheers sacrilegiously) is more suitable to Gerard Barrett’s debut feature than anything an advertisement can think up. The line neatly sums up the predicament facing Jimmy Walsh (Joe Mullins) in the quietly riveting Pilgrim Hill. We meet Jimmy at a time in his life where things aren’t going so well. His days are spent relentlessly doing the farm work, be it the mending of fences or the milking of cows. These are long and solitary days with an ailing and unseen father the reward at the end of them. Jimmy is lonely, desperately so and things need to change.

The power in Barrett’s film resides in the rhythmic quietness. In the repetitive sounds of the machines that milk the cows. In the stirring of the many cups of tea that punctuate the day. In the sitting at the bar having the quietest of pints. There is practically no music for the first hour of the film which gives the film a claustrophobic feel and hermetically seals Jimmy into his existence. But that seal is broken by a visit from a local health inspector which leaves Jimmy facing an uncertain future: should he listen to his only friend Tommy (Muiris Crowley) and think about a life away from farming or resign himself to repeating the generation before and stay with the only thing he knows for the rest of his life.

The only out seems to be Jimmy’s straight to camera discussions which act as a confessional. This is where he lets out all the emotions and fears about his past and present. There are some heartbreaking words here but for me this is where the film fell down a little. They felt possibly tacked on to pad out the running time to feature length. Yes the subjects that Jimmy speaks about are important to the character but I didn’t need it as exposition. I wanted a visual representation of those words. This is a real pity as I fell perfectly into the rhythm of the film and it was the straight to camera moments that pulled me out of it. There is magic in Barrett’s roving camera on the farm but the magic slips when the story stops. Joe Mullins is a revelation in the main role. He carries the weight of his loneliness in that walk of his, in the glances at others and at himself in the mirror. Those eyes tell you all you need to know about his regret and isolation which makes the straight to camera pieces unnecessary.

Pilgrim Hill is a very good debut film. With a reported budget of €4,500 it is quite frankly astonishing. It is also a film of our times, looking at a country bereft of direction. It captures the feeling that farming was one of our indigenous industries ignored while we chased the housing dream. Now that the hangover has come, this is what is left: a broken industry full of broken men. There is an authenticity here; you instantly know that both Barrett and Mullins know the terrain well. They have carved out a memorable and low key film with a great central character at the heart of it. Alas, is not the masterpiece that some have said. But there is more than enough here to suggest that Barrett could be a significant Irish filmmaker for years to come.

Film Review - Stella Days (2012)

During the recent Presidential elections in Ireland there was a slightly tongue in cheek campaign to get Martin Sheen to enter the race. This was specifically related to his portrayal of Jed Bartlet in The West Wing but there was also the fact that Martin Sheen seems intrinsically related to Ireland. He has studied and made films here. He is a man that we trust. There is even a small chance he would have got a decent amount of votes had he threw his hat in the ring. The point being one that most film fans already knew all too well: a film will invariably be better if he has a role in it. After watching Stella Days the temptation is to wonder just how bad the film would have been without him.

Sheen plays Father Barry, a priest in small town Ireland in the 1950s. He is an educated and forward thinking priest who has a desire to return to Rome. This hope is dashed by the vindictive and vain Bishop Hegarty (a fine Tom Hickey) who wants Father Barry to raise funds to build a new modernist church. Father Barry is a film buff and decides to set up a small cinema to raise money. He does this with help from the new local school teacher Tim (Trystan Grayville) who is himself attracted to a married woman (the husband is largely absent).

This is a story of the old versus the new. The opening scene has ESB workers putting up poles in the snow to bring electricity to the small town. This is a fascinating time, when you can see modern Ireland begin to light up but sadly it doesn’t really get explored. In its place comes Brendan McSweeney (Stephen Rea) a local businessman and soon to be politician who wants to keep the old ways intact and therefore becomes Father Barry’s nemesis. Thus the scene is set for a battle of wills for the soul of the town.

Stella Days wants to be an ambitious and the central themes are certainly interesting. It wants to delve deep into the history of Ireland and how it is shaped by the encroachment of technology be it with electricity, cinema or kitchen appliances, but it never really does this. Indeed some of the early scenes of women looking at kitchen appliances with suspicion almost seem to be lifted from an unseen Father Ted episode with Mrs. Doyle in the role of the bewildered housewife. The other real problem for the first hour or so is the muddled narrative and the clichéd storytelling. This prevents the film from getting at those ideas with any real affect which lessens the film’s impact. Add to this the fact that Stephen Rea is completely wasted in what is probably the least interesting role I have seen him in. His politician is just a cipher for the film to lay out its ‘keep the town traditional’ ideas and nothing else. This is a real pity as Rea is usually a terrific actor with better material than he has been given here. 

Things take a darker turn during the final act and the film finally comes to life. There are some genuinely emotional moments in the final third of the film that go some way to rescuing the film as a whole. Sheen is absolutely terrific here, adding a real sense of danger to the kindly priest role that perhaps would have been expected. He is a scholarly priest and there is the feeling that he looks down on the people of the town as uneducated fools. He is outwardly kind but it is his eyes that some of his real feelings are betrayed. If only the other characters in the film were as well developed. Thaddeus O’ Sullivan directs in a workmanlike fashion, giving Stella Days the feel of a TV drama rather than anything cinematic. For a film that is partly about cinema, this is disappointing. Overall Stella Days is an earnest film that never successfully captures the times that it is set. For that I would recommend a watching of Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy.

Dublin Film Festival 2013 Reviews - #5 Jump

Jump tells the story of four twenty-somethings whose lives collide one New Year’s Eve in Derry.  It stars Nichola Burley as Greta a young girl with a lot of personal problems. The film opens with her on the Derry Peace Bridge debating whether to jump off or not. We then get a flashback/flash-forward non linear narrative telling us what led to this point.

Remember the Paul Haggis film Crash and the amount of times the same people kept on running into each other? Well that annoyed the hell out of me and sometimes that kind of contrived set up can put you off a film (Crash had other major problems to be honest). Jump suffers from a similar fate. Yes I know Derry is a little smaller than L.A. but the likelihood of all the main characters continuously running into each other is absurd. To say that the story is contrived is really an understatement. Not only do the characters meet a lot but the ways they come together are ridiculous. Worse than that, the intersections are major plot points.

For some people this may be easier to get past but this is not the only problem with Jump. It attempts, unsuccessfully, to marry four distinct genres: the gangster film, a drama, a comedy and a romance. This is impossibly ambitious and it fails on nearly all accounts. The gangster story is clichéd and exhausting, the drama which deals with suicide is underdeveloped. There are a few laughs to be had but not as many as is needed. The central romance is, to give the film credit, unconventional but its pacing is off and the resolution a little too neat in how it sets up the final scene.

This is a film that I could see an undemanding audience enjoy. It is easy on the eye as Derry comes over as very photogenic. But Irish films have to be held to as high a standard as any other. It is not enough to say it is OK ‘for an Irish film’. It should be judged on whether or not it works as a whole. And in this case, it does not. In fairness, it opens well with a great time lapse shot of the Peace Bridge but quickly falls apart. I suspect that it will do well at the cinema. But that will not make it a good film, sadly.