WE SHOULD be grateful that when a film of Michael Collins's life eventually came to be made, this task was undertaken by a gifted Irish director.
It could so easily have fallen into the hands of someone with a different background, who might or might not have made a great film, but who would all too probably have lacked sensitivity to the atmosphere of the period, to the issues involved, and to the subtleties of Collins's complex character.
On all these counts Neil Jordan merits our applause, and our gratitude. That is not to say that there is nothing to criticise or question. Everyone will have their own list of queries or complaints: I shall come to my own in a moment. But by any standards the film is a triumph, and for many Irish people viewing it is likely to prove a deeply moving experience.
Of course, I did not come to it without bias. Growing up, I was greatly influenced by the tone in which my parents spoke of Michael Collins: with warm affection, admiration, and enduring sadness at his early tragic death. My mother's Civil War sympathies may have been republican, but "Mick" I can still remember the inflection of her voice as she pronounced his name - was as much her hero as my father's. When I was born a few years after his death, it was inevitable that they should have chosen "Michael" for my second name.
It is difficult for me therefore to envisage how people of later generations, and above all of the present one, will react to what seems to me to be an accurate depiction of the mood of that period; to the idealism, courage and heroism, but also to the violent aspects of our national movement for independence. One of the many tragedies of the IRA campaign of the past quarter-century is that for many in this part of Ireland it has blurred and distorted their vision of our past.
The real test of such a film cannot be its fidelity to the details of history. On that technical ground Michael Collins can, of course, be faulted, but rather a combination of authenticity, dramatic intensity and good acting, together with that elusive quality, integrity. On all these counts this film scores highly. The Venice awards for the film and for its star, Liam Neeson, were well deserved.
For dramatic purposes the film has to compress both events and participants. Two major events disappear because of this compression: the 1918 election that validated Sinn Fein's right to speak and act for the majority of the Irish people, and the Treaty negotiation.
As to the latter, we see de Valera opting out of the negotiating team himself and telling a disconcerted Collins that he is to go to London, in the film as leader of the team, which of course he wasn't. And we see de Valera's reaction to the news of the signature of the Treaty. But nothing in between. Dramatically this makes sense: to have intruded even a sketchy account of that negotiation would have broken the dramatic intensity.
THE compression of participants in these events is most notable in respect of Collins's close associates his agents within the police; Joe O'Reilly and Ned Broy respectively are employed as proxies for these two groups of people; others like Emmet Dalton and David Neligan are air-brushed out.
Jordan treats sensitively the relationship with Kitty Kiernan, who is beautifully acted by Julia Roberts, and Michael Collins's friendship with Harry Boland is accurately and movingly depicted, even if the circumstances of the latter's death have been fictionalised for the dramatic purpose of bringing Collins on the scene in its immediate aftermath.
For me, however, the least convincing fictionalisation is the purported murder of Ned Broy in Dublin Castle on the night of Bloody Sunday. Having spent many happy days in Ned Broy's house during the last war, fighting the naval encounters of that conflict on the drawing-room carpet with the aid of his son's extensive set of model warships, I found his premature demise in the film hard to take. But I suppose the fact that all Collins's agents in the police survived unscathed is too improbable to be acceptable in a fictionalised drama.
The only historical point of real importance that can be made against the film is its handling of Eamon de Valera. The part is convincingly acted by Alan Rickman, and some negative aspects of his character are probably accurate: de Valera's unhappiness with the prominence Collins had achieved at home during his long absence in the United States, and the lack of military realism that led to the Dublin Brigade's heavy losses in the Custom House attack shortly before the Truce.
As for the Treaty negotiation, it is possible that in nominating Collins to the delegation he may have hoped to prise control of the Volunteers away from him in his absence. And there may also have been a concern to tie this powerful figure firmly into a solution that he knew would fall short of what he had described to Arthur Griffith as "this strait-jacket of a Republic".
But his motivation could not have been that which Jordan puts into Collins's mouth, making him a scapegoat for an agreement that de Valera himself would reject: for de Valera unrealistically believed that his formula of external association with the British Commonwealth might be accepted, and if it wasn't, he expected that the war would resume.
FINALLY, however one interprets Jordan's ambiguous presentation of the missed encounter between de Valera and Collins in west Cork on the eve of Beal na Blath, this dramatic episode seems unfair to de Valera.
For, as I have understood it, despite opposition from the republican leadership at a meeting near Beal na Blath on the previous day, de Valera went west, hoping to meet Collins in order to find a way of ending the Civil War, but failed to contact him before Collins left again for Dublin, fatally via Beal na Blath.
There he was ambushed by republicans who, because of an indiscreet query by the Collins entourage from a republican sentry about blocked roads on the previous day, knew of his presence, and were expecting his return by this route.
The more charitable interpretation of the ambiguously treated near-encounter in the film between the two men is that de Valera was so affected on overhearing Collins speak well of him that be broke down and abandoned his attempted meeting, following which the intermediary in this near-contact plotted the ambush.
On an alternative, less charitable, interpretation, the de Valera visit to west Cork was a Machiavellian part of the ambush plot. Neither version finds any historical justification, and both are unfair to de Valera, then at the lowest point of his career.
Leaving aside these historical points, which may worry some people in this country but will not detract from the success this film is sure to have world-wide, what of the violence portrayed in the film?
At some points it is overdone: the roughing-up of the leaders of the Rising after their surrender has no historical basis and adds nothing to the film, and the same is true of the gratuitous presence of an armoured vehicle in Croke Park on Bloody Sunday, firing on a scale that would surely have killed more than the dozen people who died there.
But the more shocking brutality of the immediately preceding episode, involving the simultaneous killing of British agents in their homes by Collins's "squad", is true to what happened, and it would have been wrong both dramatically and historically to have glossed over it.
The portrayal of Collins by Liam Neeson is excellent, even if, inevitably, the script limits his opportunity to display the whole range of his character's multiple talents. Collins's courage and charm, his extraordinary instinct for leadership, his dynamism and his intense loyalty to those who worked with him, all of these are well portrayed, as well as his puppy-like delight in wrestling with his friends. In addition, Neeson reflects the self-questioning of a sensitive man forced to employ methods that were to him intensely distasteful.
But, as others have already commented, the film omits the religious aspect of the man, and also, for understandable reasons, fails to display the remarkable but undramatic administrative ability that he demonstrated as Minister for Finance, raising and tightly controlling the funds needed by the underground government and its army.
One aspect of the film I had difficulty with was the kind of language employed by Collins in the film. Perhaps because none of his contemporaries whom I knew in their later years ever used expletives of this kind, I suppose I had unrealistically built up an image which was shattered by the film.
As for the much-talked-about worries concerning the possible impact of the film on attitudes towards the IRA's campaign of violence, this could perhaps be an issue with some people in Britain who know little of Ireland and its history. But few Irish people are likely to be influenced by this epic account of one of the founders of our State into supporting a terrorist organisation rejected by 95 per cent of the people of this island.