Mütter & Söhne

It was great to see Aiden Gillen, who I first encountered in the British version of Queer as Folk, in a much meatier, more difficult role. Also this is another terrific performance, as always by Helen Mirren. A very moving and sad film.

'Some Mother's Son' focuses on the 1981 Maze Prison hunger strike in which the IRA captives demanded to be treated as POW instead of criminals, for they regard their struggle as a war, not 'ordinary' crime. The leader, Bobby Sands, was elected in jail as MP but eventually died on 5 May, 1981. Several mothers then intervened in order to save their sons' lives: they did not want to watch their sons die.

I personally think this film is quite thought-provoking and the acting is convincing. Helen Mirren, as Kathleen Quigley, who has not been aware that her son Gerard (Aidan Gillen) is an IRA soldier, is determined to help her son to survive, while Fionnula Flanagan (Annie Higgins) is terrific as a nationalist mother who is right behind her son's beliefs but eventually witnesses his death, only after losing her other son, who is shot dead by the British Troops.

Some might say many of us are IRA sympathisers and that they are nothing but a bunch of killers, that they are nothing but a bunch of terrorists. However, as one reviewer put, 'there would be no IRA if there was no British oppression'.

break, break, break, on thy cold grey stones, oh sea

I saw this movie when it first came out, and just watched it again last night. I still feel that it's an important movie, and also that everyone in the audience except for me <insert smile here> is missing the point. It's not about the right or wrong of the IRA/Sinn Fein or Thatcher's administration, it's about a more-or-less unprecedented friendship that evolves between two sons' mothers, and how they deal with their sons' impending self-imposed deaths, a friendship that quite suddenly excludes class issues, precisely because it is about _mother's sons_.

This is evoked in many subtle ways: Mrs Quigley's daughter leaves her job at the bank because no one trusts her after her brother has been arrested, and ends up tending bar somewhere outside North Ireland -- rather declassee for a young woman who'd been working in a bank; Mrs Higgins lives her life on a bicycle, gets a driving lesson on the sea-strand from Mrs Quigley, and they both end up getting saved from an incoming tide by British/North Irish soldiers. If you check the screenplay, you can see the change in the use of forenames and last names between the two women -- it's unfair to expect Yanks to pick that up. I can't even begin to explain it to my friends, and hell, I live in a border state.

There's a unifying theme in this movie and it's the sea: the sea the mothers are connected to, and that their sons are not permitted to see.

Its ashame that more people don't know about this subject. I found this film to be very touching with a very strong moral. Yes the movie is about the I.R.A. and some of its most famous 'soldiers', however, the film touched on who is affected by these actions. I don't agree with the I.R.A but found myself empathetic to the families of the prisoners involved. Despite what the previous poster stated, this movie was pre-911 and touches not on the terrorists acts, but on the consquences of their actions. Helen Mirren was brilliant in this movie, as always. Its not exactley Michael Collins on the subject, and a lot of it was 'glamorized' for Hollywood, but all in all worth watching.

The music from "Some Mother's Son", composed and conducted by Bill Whelan, is hauntingly beautiful. Eleanor McEvoy's vocal on "The Seabird" is outstanding.

However, it is too bad the storyline in the movie doesn't match the quality of the music. Quite frankly, the movie was boring!

Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan give first rate performances as the mothers (Kathleen Quigley and Annie Higgins) of two IRA terrorists imprisoned following a rocket attack on British soldiers. David O'Hara (Frank Higgins) plays the hard core murderer who appears to enjoy killing the British. Aiden Gillen is Gerard Quigley, the unlikely terrorist, who aids his friend Higgins in the attack. O'Hara and Gillen are very believable in their roles. In fact all of the actors are good.

The problem is with the storyline and lack of action after the initial rocket attack and subsequent capture of Higgins and Quigley. The scene involving the IRA's retaliation murder of the Maze prison guards happens far too quickly for the viewer to understand what is going on. And let's face, watching people starve to death is not very exciting.

I still gave this movie 6 out of 10, because of the fine acting and music.

Irish44