Nominated for several awards at the 94th Academy Awards, “Belfast” has been described as Sir Kenneth Branagh’s “most personal film” as it’s inspired by his experiences of growing up in the city.
The coming-of-age offering has left an ineffaceable mark on critics as it follows a boy's journey in Belfast, North Ireland, at the start of “the troubles” in 1969.
When Jamie Dornan (“50 Shades of Grey”) got to the end of Sir Branagh’s screenplay, he was overwhelmed with emotion.
Born in Northern Ireland, he marvelled over how Sir Branagh captured the people of his hometown and unpacked the decades-long conflict between sections of the Protestant and Catholic communities.
The movie has been praised as a cinematic love letter to the ordinary people who make Belfast extraordinary.
And it’s told from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), a nine-year-old boy from a working-class Ulster Protestant family. His father Pa (Dornan) working in England while the rest of the family, Ma (Caitríona Balfe), his elder brother Will (Lewis McAskie) and paternal grandparents Granny (Judi Dench) and Pop (Ciarán Hinds), live in Belfast.
Although child actor Hill is lauded for his performance, so too is Dornan as he ditches the whips for a more sobering roleplay.
The premise follows the sectarian fracas and how Pa, upon his return, is pushed to join the fight but wants nothing to do with “the cause”.
As a family man, he is struggling to keep a roof over his family’s head. All he wants is a better life for them.
But the situation isn’t one he can just walk away from, especially with a troublemaker like Billy Clanton (Colin Morgan) determined to enlist Pa.
Given the stellar writing and heavyweight names on the project, it was a no-brainer for Dornan.
He said: “I essentially felt relief and gratitude that someone was telling a story that represented people from the part of the world where I’m from that showed us just as normal, hard-working families who were trying to go about their lives and didn’t ask for any of it when the conflict started on their streets.
“We have seen Belfast and the north of Ireland depicted in lots of brilliant – and worthy – ways on screen before but it’s often through a political lens, a paramilitary lens, a terrorist lens, and I’m not saying that they don’t have their places because they do, and some of them are brilliant movies, but I think it’s really important to see a movie that directly involves the beginning of the conflict, that shows how it affected normal hard-working people who didn’t ask for it.
“And, as someone who has travelled around the world for 20 years, telling people I’m from Belfast and seeing every reaction imaginable to that piece of information, that’s really necessary.”
The movie has bagged several awards at the People’s Choice Award at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival and the Golden Globes.
The National Board of Review named it one of the best films of 2021.
“The Fall” actor added: “Ken was very much saying – and he will continue to say – that it’s semi-autobiographical and it’s based on life events that are fictionalised, and of course that’s true, and I'll back that up.
“But much of it happened – most of it happened – and a lot of the specific parts of the story are true.
“But he was always playing that down and I think it was to give us freedom, so that we didn’t feel the pressure of playing the most important people in his life and telling his story.”
In many ways, slipping into the skin of Pa stirred a myriad emotions for Dornan. It became a deeply personal depiction for him as he is au fait with the history and was born into the conflict.
He added: “I’ve not played quite a character like this, from Belfast, before.
“I will continue to and I want to tell stories from that part of the world for the entirety of my career, should I be given the opportunity and, as so far I have a few times, but never as on the nose as a movie called ‘Belfast’, and that’s not going to come around too often and obviously not again after this.
“It resonated with me in a very sincere way and it’s a great depiction of a family. And I think that is why it has resonated with so many people across the world. I’ve had people from Ghana to Haiti to Spain come up to me and say: ‘That’s my story.’
“Is it exactly my story? No. I come from a more middle-class background than Ken did. I grew up in a different era.
“I was born 13 years into the conflict and Ken was alive when it began.
“But that understanding I have of people from that part of the world; their resilience and humour, and that understanding of families and of Belfast is in my bones. It just is.
“So, a lot of it I was able to take from my own upbringing and my own experiences and I was able to put that into the part.”
“Belfast” is showing at cinemas, nationwide.
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