‘Belfast will still be here when you get back...’
Go on. Try and find a review for this film that doesn’t describe it as ‘warm’. Go on! You can’t can you. Pathetic. And that’s because that is very much what this is. A warm, shamelessly sentimental film that allows writer/director Kenneth Branagh to grapple with his tumultuous but loving upbringing in the midst of the troubles in Belfast in the late ’60s.
Buddy (Jude Hill) is a normal little boy preoccupied with normal little boy things. The girl he fancies at school. The arguments of his parents (played by Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe). The adoration of his grandparents (Ciaran Hinds and Dame Judi Dench). The difference being that he also has to contend with violence, bombings and hatred.
Filmed in beautiful black and white with only occasional lapses into colour, Belfast is an intensely personal project that allows Branagh to examine what it was like growing up in the midst of a conflict. His script is solid rather than spectacular, but it is poignant and prescient and often funny, and it relies on the brilliance of his cast to bring it all together. Hill is a revelation in his debut feature film, and he does a great job in holding the viewer’s hand through a traumatic and confusing time. Both Dornan and Hinds give career best performances with the latter deservedly nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the upcoming Oscars. Dench is wonderful as ever and Balfe shares a wonderful chemistry with Dornan, the realism of their relationship is one of the film’s many high points.
Belfast is rarely bombastic (although there are a couple of violent set pieces that are fantastically filmed), instead relying on universal themes and childhood memories that many of us can relate to. And it is all the better for it. A quiet, understated, but heart-warming movie.