Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

In this personal tribute to home and family, celebrated actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh has produced a powerful and evocative — and often romanticised — account of his boyhood years on the streets of Belfast. Set in 1969, as the city is engulfed by The Troubles, the film juxtaposes an idyllic vision of family life and community solidarity against sinister forces bent on destroying them.

Nine-year-old Buddy (played by Jude Hill) is at the heart of the film, and everything we see on screen is filtered through his wondering and searching eyes. For anyone Buddy’s age, life is an unpredictable, exhilarating, unfolding narrative of questioning and discovery and — in the Northern Ireland of this period — growing up very fast.

Belfast opens as the vibrant life of a working-class street is torn apart by a brutal raid by sectarian thugs — a warning that the three Catholic families living there must be ejected from their homes, or worse will follow. Buddy’s father, like the rest of the street, refuses to be intimidated, setting the scene for more threats and violence to follow.

The civil war on the streets of Belfast is exacerbated by the internal conflicts caused by the family’s growing indebtedness to the IRD and the fact that Buddy’s father, working in England, can only see his wife and children once a fortnight. When the offer of a permanent job and home in England arises, it seems like a heaven-sent solution to so many intractable problems.

Buddy is part of a very supportive extended family, and the scenes where he interacts with his granddad (Ciarán Hinds), stricken with lung disease contracted on the coalfields of the English midlands, but a buoyantly happy and loving man, and his equally affectionate but phlegmatic granny (Judi Dench), are moving and memorable.

Shot in silvery black-and-white, the film shifts into full technicolour when Buddy is taken to the movies or the theatre — to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or a theatrical version of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol — reminding us vividly of the professional path taken by the older Branagh.

After the film, I reflected how relevant its political message is today — mirroring a world where communities (in Ireland, Bosnia, Rwanda, and increasingly in apparently stable Western democracies) can be poisoned and divided against themselves by dark forces greedy for power at any cost. A sobering watch, but spliced with moments of wonder, delight and sheer joy.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 268 March 2022: 28