Bloody Sunday

I have seen "Bloody Sunday" twice now - once on the big screen and once on DVD - and read Don Mullen's book, "Eyewitness Bloody Sunday." This movie is a very realistic depiction of the defining moment of the "troubles" in Northern Ireland. The hand-held cameras and grainy film style make it feel more like a documentary than a movie, which of course is the intent. As another reviewer has mentioned, the acting is very natural throughout. It does take some time to get started, but once the the shooting starts it hits the viewer like a sledgehammer. Very powerful.

The film jumps so frequently from scene to scene that at times it is distracting, though I was much less annoyed by this the second time around. And, having seen it once with and once without subtitles, I must say that although the subtitles (optional on the DVD) are intrusive they are quite welcome. I love the Irish accent but at times it can be difficult for me to decipher,and much of the dialogue in the movie is muted. It was good to know what was being said.

As for the objectivity, of course the movie is slanted - so was the situation. But it is not unreasonably slanted. The British are not shown as one-dimensional demons - in particular, Nicholas Farrell does a great job of conveying Brigadier Mclellan's ambiguity and even disapproval of the course taken against his wishes by the supposed "Observer," Maj. Gen. Ford (who, if the movie has a villain, is the prime candidate.) At one point early on several Paras are discussing the day's prospects, and reveal how tired they are of being harassed, shot at and otherwise abused by the native population. This makes the day's events more understandable. This does not EXCUSE the cold-blooded gunning down of 27 people - there is no excuse for that - but at least one can see a contributing factor. And protesters are shown, once or twice, firing back. (The key here is firing BACK - evidence indicates that no marchers fired until the first two protesters were wounded. And those scattered few that attempted return fire were quickly dissuaded by their countrymen. Later in the day the IRA did go into action, but not until after the bloodletting in Bogside was over with.) Ivan Cooper's (James Nesbitt) words at the close of the film were shown to be all too true in the years since the actual incident. The IRA was on unsteady legs at the time, but has never lacked support since January 30, 1972.

The film is a powerful object lesson concerning the misuse of force, and one that governments everywhere - including my own country, the United States - should take to heart. It has a few flaws, but I think deserves the awards it has received. 8/10 points.

being from belfast, i have an all too familiar recollection of this and many other tragic events.

being born protestant, i have little use for the cowardly, yet brutal and malicious, mutation of the provisional ira; under the helm of gerry addams.

being born sentient, i have little use for the fire and brimstone polarisations; counterspin and half-truths of ian paisley.

being born human, i have empathy for the slain.

the bloody Sunday massacre in derry, was a tragic testament to man's blood-lust, fueled by fear and adrenaline. the events depicted in the movie "bloody Sunday," provide an arresting portrayal of a tacitly monumental aspect of modern ulster history. the portrayals of the people and the events maintain an objective testimony toward a tragedy that is both sobering and inexcusable.

"bloody Sunday" takes no sides, and distributes no blame. it simply reenacts the events as they were recorded, and lets the viewer make his or her own decisions.

if you are familiar with the conflict; if you are distressed by man's inhumanity unto himself; if you are simply interested in a detached account of history; this is an important film to see.

"Bloody Sunday" is a very startling, cinema-verite recreation of a very specific date (January 30, 1972), in a very specific place (Derry, Northern Ireland) of an event that for the Irish became "our Sharpeville."

But for an American audience with no benefit of subtitles for the brogues and working class Brit accents, no explanations outside of eventual context for lingo and slang (it took me awhile to keep track of "provos" vs "paras"), the quasi-documentary, in-your-face approach takes on a tragic universality.

It could be part of a Cassandra trilogy with `Black Hawk Down' and `No Man's Land' about why military should not be in charge in urban strife, whether as "peacekeepers" or in civil wars or regime changes, no matter how heinous the regime to be changed. A lesson for the Baghdad invasion planners?

Cities are complicated social ecologies, and the film shows a great diversity of attitudes and pressures on all sides, managing to be both clinical in meticulous detail and visceral in shocking impact. The film is probably not objective about the British (I don't think it's a coincidence that the imperious Brit "observer" who takes repugnant charge is played by Tim Pigott-Smith who was a similar colonialist in `The Jewel in the Crown.") A central universal image becomes the awesome power of rock-throwing, unemployed teen-age boys to spark war.

The liberals in the middle, clinging to dreams of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and fair community relations, are morally destroyed over the course of a few hours and the extremists with guns on both sides feed on each other in perpetual destruction like the ouroboros image of the snake eating itself. I kept feeling I missed the exact flash point in a wandering attention moment and wanted to immediately re-watch it to see if I could track the gotcha! moment when escalation could have been prevented, so I look forward to this being available on video tape.

But the film does clearly show that it was attitudes that created the violent outcome and consequent government non-investigation, as we see in so many police situations. Once soldiers enter a city it is a police situation with all those complexities.

I know James Nesbitt primarily from frothy Irish comedies, like `BallykissAngel,' so his staggering portrayal of the M.P. in the middle is a revelation, as he goes from planning a civil rights march to pleading with his girlfriend to physical heroism to a break-down in shock.

The version of the titular U2 song played out at the end, running well past the credits finish, is a moving, live, passionate audience sing-along where Bono shouts out other locales that have experienced similar situations to emphasize the universality.

This is a film with a terrible nerve, from the press conferences in the Sunday morning, through the preparations for the march and the preparations of the military, and forward to the scenes in the hospital afterwards. The camera is working in a way, there you definitely can feel the gloomy weather and the excitement.

It's also a 1972 feeling about it, which doesn't feel acted, but like a documentary. James Nesbitt is making a tremendous job as the MP and when you notice that this man hasn't got an Oscar, the Oscar institution definitely seems like the stupid joke it is.

The only thing you can have against this Paul Greengrass' movie is the tendency in the end, where the relative documentary objectivity in the beginning, moves over to tendency. The unionists and the British government remain the totally bad guys and the catholics are the eternal martyrs. They might have been that this Sunday, but the conflict of Northern Ireland is a little more complicated.

However, this is definitely more exciting than most of what you see in the action genre.

I thought this was an amazing movie.

Now I learned about this in school for a while and as an Englishman I do feel a certain, oblique connection to the troubles. I didn't realise this kind of thing could happen among my compatriots (I'm not trying to belittle Irish Nationalism by calling the Northern Irish my compatriots, it's just how I have come to see them), and I hadn't realised I'd thought this way. It was a real consciousness raiser for me.

My biases notwithstanding, this movie is as a hypnotic account of a confusing episode of an even more confusing time. It has the task of representing the mindset of the times, the mindsets, I should say, while still making it into a spontaneous narrative.

I'm not an expert so I cannot vouch for the authenticity of any of this, but I feel I can believe all of it. There is a tendency for us to demarcate history from real life. A million deaths is a statistic as Stalin said. But here I really feel history and the lives of regular people converge in a devastating way.

At its heart I suppose the movie is a mystery. Not so much who-done-it but a why-did-it. I really felt while I was watching, all the chaos and threat that leads to tragedy while still feeling baffled and disorientated throughout. It feels like a documentary. The dialogue is spontaneous but still rich with nuance. The cinematography is candid and even shaky, giving it an often hypnotic, Blair Witch quality.

A movie to never forget.