OPINION:'Experts' fail to take account of human emotions in their recipe for reconciliation, writes DAVID ADAMS
'THE TROUBLE with me is I've got all the wrong feelings," declares Joe Griffin, in the semi-fictional BBC Northern Ireland film, Five Minutes of Heaven, screened last Sunday night on BBC 2.
It is the most poignant and telling line in an excellent drama.
Joe, played by James Nesbitt, is about to meet Alistair Little, played by Liam Neeson. Little is the ex-UVF member who murdered Joe Griffin’s brother. The meeting has been arranged by a television company which wants to film it for a documentary on truth and reconciliation. The TV people are banking on there being lots of raw emotion on display: confrontation, anger, and maybe even some tears.
Most of all, they are hoping that an understanding will gradually develop between the two men, leading to televisual gold dust: a handshake, or at least some discernible sign of reconciliation to bring the programme to a neat and successful conclusion.
Joe knows what is expected of him, but he knows, too, that he cannot deliver, for he has “ . . . all the wrong feelings”.
Regardless of the demands being put upon him, he cannot feel anything but murderous hatred for Alistair Little.
Ever since the killing of his brother – 33 years earlier – Joe has been consumed with anger and bitterness, and now an inability to overcome those emotions has him feeling inadequate as well.
Most obviously, Five Minutes of Heavenis taking a well-aimed swipe at the exploitative nature of "reality" television, where, whatever about its posturing around conflict resolution and other similarly righteous issues, entertainment is always the bottom line.
Just as important, though, is the film’s questioning of what, for many, is the highly lucrative business of conflict resolution, and, in particular, the demands and pressures being placed upon victims by its prescriptive recipe for reconciliation.
There are thousands of people like Joe Griffin in Northern Ireland who, on top of everything else, have been left feeling inadequate because, try as they may, they cannot feel anything but anger and hatred towards the killers of their loved ones.
Yet they are told by conflict resolution “experts” that only by surmounting such feelings can they hope to bring peace of mind to themselves, and ensure a peaceful future for Northern Ireland – no pressure there, then. The experts have a road map to peace and tranquillity which dictates that, as if by some immutable law of nature, reconciliation will follow truth (particularly of the confrontational kind) just as surely as night follows day.
Not unlike the television people in the film, they take no account of the reality of human emotions, but seem to believe that the painful after-effects of the Troubles can be gathered up, neatly parcelled, and then dispensed with, like so much toxic waste. Frighteningly, some of the same self-styled experts are now travelling the world, poking their noses into conflicts infinitely more complex than our own, peddling expensive advice on peace processing to others.
If these people had been intimately involved in guiding our own society out of conflict then there might possibly be some worthwhile international role for them to play – but most of them weren’t. Well, at least not until such times as the peace process here began to morph into a gravy train.
Goodness only knows what well-meaning damage is being wrought in faraway places.
One is reminded of Ronald Reagan’s quip on government interference, and wonders how long before people in conflict zones around the world conclude that the most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from Northern Ireland, and I’m here to help.”
Thankfully, beyond the broad subject matter, Five Minutes of Heavenbears little resemblance to other Troubles-related films, with their invariably thin-to-the-point -of-anorexic storylines, dodgy accents, and lazy stereotypes. Where, apart from the occasional exception to prove the rule, every unionist is a stupid, thuggish, bigot; every nationalist an innocent put-upon victim; and everyone with an English accent a devious, shadowy manipulator. Where loyalist paramilitary characters are invariably British-controlled psychopaths, while their republican counterparts are reluctant warriors (mostly honourable people, left with little option but to resort to violence).
Another novelty is the acting which is superb, from not only Neeson (in particular) and Nesbitt, but from Mark Davison (who plays a young Alistair Little) and Annamaria Marinca (who plays a runner for the TV production company).
The film draws attention to how the effects of violence can spread, like ripples on a pond, to blight the lives of people far removed from the immediate family and friends of a murder victim. Joe’s wife and young daughters are a case in point. So too, probably surprisingly for some, is Alistair Little, who was only 17 years old when he murdered Joe’s brother.
I have never met Little, but I have met people like him. Men who go through life carrying an enormous weight of guilt for the pain and suffering they inflicted, sometimes when they were mere adolescents.
At the end of Five Minutes of Heaven, unlike in real life for Alistair Little and Joe Griffin as far as I'm aware, the main characters do find reconciliation, but not with one another, not reconciliation of the conventional kind. Both perpetrator and victim find an inner peace, a personal reconciling with the past.
Every professional peace-processor should be made watch this film, and take notes.