All over these islands - and most particularly in this part of Ireland men, women and children will fill the cinemas over coming days to see Neil Jordan's Michael Collins. The cinema industry declares the level of interest to be unprecedented. Hence the simultaneous screening in towns and cities throughout the State. A high level of repeat viewing is also anticipated.
There is a variety of reasons for this extraordinary response to a film as yet unseen by the general public - and for the passionate exchanges which have preceded its release. The advance publicity has been beyond any promoter's wildest dreams. Neil Jordan's development as a director is widely considered now to be at its zenith. Protagonists of every hue seek to relate various aspects of the movie to contemporary conditions. But more than anything else, there is the enduring fascination with the enigma of Michael Collins, almost three quarters of a century after his death.
The young leader, cut down in his prime, is an intriguing and saleable hero figure in most societies. Michael Collins well fits the bill for a country which in many respects is still emerging from the stifling atmosphere of its early decades of self rule. Collins still represents a fanciful notion of what might have been. Frozen in time, he remains active, virile, brave; an attractive icon, contrasting with his contemporaries who lived on to be grey and careful. Put aside the reality that many young people cannot say whether Michael Collins was for or against the Treaty. (Indeed, in one recent RTE radio programme, neither could the presenter.)
Conversely, Collins remains a hate figure for those who see him as the progenitor of today's IRA and as the father of insurrectionary violence in 20th century Ireland (overlooking the fact that years before ever he handled a gun, the Ulster Volunteer Force was drilling with its imported rifles on the docks at Larne). By way of example, Jordan's film is "a deceitful piece of terrorist propaganda", in the words of the BBC's former political editor, John Cole.
But film is a one dimensional thing and history is not. A two and a half hour celluloid adventure drama cannot nearly depict the complexity of six years of war, of politics, of constitutional upheaval and of immense, interwoven human tragedy and triumph. Michael Collins is no doubt a superb film in many respects. But it can no more set out the completeness of Irish history in the period 1916-1922 than Cromwell told the story of the English civil war or Cleopatra depicted the reality of life in ancient Egypt. Nor does its director make any such claims for it.
Arguments as to whether Jordan has been faithful to the historically known facts are largely futile. A film such as this can be little more than an opening of a page, a reference point, a place where argument and self discovery can begin, where today's generations are, offered an insight into a segment of the forces and circumstances which went to make this country what it is today. Not all of it will be edifying or reassuring. Not all of it can be accurate. But a mature people should be able to enjoy it and learn from it. It is by all accounts a moving and finely crafted piece of work, technically superb and brilliantly directed. But it is, after all, only a movie.