Some Mother's Son

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.

'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'.

There are some excellent, nuanced performances in this movie, particularly from the two leads, Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan (an underrated character actress best known for her work in "The Others"). But by no means is this easy to watch - and it's best appreciated, whatever your view on the long-standing conflict, if you have some idea of the history first, and the passion that still surrounds Bobby Sands. Tim Pat Coogan's "The Troubles," while a mammoth volume, summarizes the death and destruction that have been visited on all three of the major players - British, Catholic, Protestant.

Interestingly, Helen Mirren also starred in "Cal", another movie about the "Troubles" of Northern Ireland, playing a Protestant widow who falls in love with a Catholic man. In both movies, Mirren's character endures the unthinkable - watching the people she loves best being torn by sectarian violence. Yet in "Cal," Mirren's character is more passive, having things "happen" to her. In "Some Mother's Son", Mirren and Flanagan take action, their passion for their children stirring them to activism, right or wrong.

With an excellent cast, soundtrack and photography this film's one flaw is that it must over-simplify a complex and pivotal episode in Irish history. Despite that it does a fairly good job of capturing the essence of what happened, smartly exposing the viewer to this rarely seen world through the eyes of a middle-class mother whose son, unknown to her, is caught up in the incendiary world of 'the Troubles' of Northern Ireland.

Convicted of taking part in an attack on British forces as part of an IRA Active Service Unit, her son quickly finds himself the cell-mate of soon-to-be-IRA-icon/martyr, Bobby Sands. Although the film does not really explore the personality of this seminal figure (for ex: that he was a poet), it does convey the gravity of the situation he was thrust in as well as the huge impact the hunger strike had on the Northern Irish, indeed people around the world.

But more so, this film is about the suffering that the women in these situations, particularly the mothers (hence the title) must endure. They have no choice in the tragedy that forces itself on their lives, yet they must find ways to overcome and affect what positive change they can.

Some say there is not enough "action" in the film. It is not an "action" movie. There are plenty of Dolph Lundgren vehicles out there if that is all you want. This film is about how episodes of moving history effects everyday people's lives.

While it is difficult to separate oneself from the politics of "the troubles" I think its important to keep in mind that this is a film, not a documentary. Its goal is to be historically authentic, not accurate. The message is one that speaks to mothers on all sides of the political divide. I think that one of the reviewers unfortunately missed the point of the movie which is featured in the title.

As a film this is an incredibly moving portrait of the horror, sacrifice and absurdity of war. The cast is outstanding; Helen Mirren is simply stunning, Fionnula Flanagan gives a powerful performance, Aidan Gillen is stirring as Helen Mirren's son and Bobby Sands' cell mate and finally John Lynch portrays the role of Bobby Sands quite fairly. The writers and director Terry George and Jim Sheridan have done an outstanding job writing and filming a story that transcends conflict and speaks to humanity we all share. While it shows the injustice of the position from which many of the North Ireland Catholics faced (and therein lies its political slant) the title firmly roots this film as so much more. I highly recommend this film for its historical authenticity and the brilliant performance by Helen Mirren.