Sir, – The plaudits being heaped on Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast bode ill for the perceptions of Belfast that the film will prompt around the world. Its sentimental aspirations are irreproachable; they recur in countless other films – as Sir Ken acknowledges in Belfast itself. The Bruegel-esque street idylls are only a slight, though patronising, irritation. The film’s Black school-mistress and Sikh corner-shop owner, on the other hand, certainly misrepresent the city as more diverse than it was in 1969. Sir Ken has bowed quite unnecessarily to contemporary wokeness in his casting. I can remember a Black British soldier being the subject of amazed inspection at Belfast Water Works in the early 1970s – less than a mile from Sir Ken’s old Belfast address. “Pop” (Ciaran Hinds) seems to be laid to rest in some kind of Potter’s Field (Matthew 27:7), almost certainly in violation of the Belfast City Council’s environmental regulations in 1969, and the mourners at his working-class Belfast Protestant funeral repair to a wake – assuming the scene isn’t some kind of fantasy section – that would have had the Rev Dr Paisley popping in his pulpit. Young Buddy’s haul of Christmas presents would have bankrupted even a well-off household of the time. But the most jarring message of Belfast comes in the first of its valedictory dedications: “For those who stayed” – embodied in the film by the bereft and wrung-out figure of “Granny” (Dame Judi Dench) for whom a wretched fate clearly awaits, while Buddy (Sir Ken’s alter ego) escapes en famille. Those of us who “stayed” are not those who failed to escape. We were on the spot to urge the peace-makers to go the extra mile to end the Troubles, and with our fellow-islanders in the Republic of Ireland, we endorsed the terms of the Belfast Agreement. Sir Ken was not eligible to vote. We have exposed some of the most grievous miscarriages of justice in the most recent dreary chapter of what constitutes British “government” on this part of the island, facing down along the way (like the citizens of Liverpool in recent times) the closed ranks of an ignorant and uncaring British establishment. We have uncovered the sinister practices of British law enforcement, colluding with terrorists on both sides of the conflict, and endured a succession of hapless Northern Ireland secretaries of state. The citizens of the real city of Belfast, like the citizens of Northern Ireland, will have a role to play in the making and taking of a new direction in the history of this island. And it is the “staying” that makes us fit to take on the task.
This is a generous town, and Sir Kenneth is one of our most distinguished nurselings, guaranteed the warm welcome he will always deserve for his services to stage and film. But for all its big-budget billing, Belfast has done the city a disservice. Patrick Kielty’s recent BBC documentaries stand as more authentic and affecting reflections on what we have been and who we are. – Yours, etc,
JOHN CURRAN,
Holywood,
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Co Down.