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An exquisite labour of love from Branagh the Belfast boy

MATTHEW BOND

Belfast

Cert: 12A, 1hr 38mins Nightmare Alley

Cert: 15, 2hrs 30mins A Journal For Jordan

Cert: 12A, 2hrs 11mins

Brian Wilson:

Long Promised Road Cert: 12A, 1hr 33mins

Ihave known that Kenneth Branagh was born in Belfast for almost as long as I’ve known there was a Kenneth Branagh at all but, somehow, I’ve never quite believed it. It just didn’t seem possible that one of the greatest Shakespearian actors of his generation and modest owner of such a mellifluous, beautifully modulated speaking voice could ever have been a wee Belfast boy with an Ulster brogue.

Belfast – clearly a labour of very personal love for Branagh – is the film that puts me right and it does so quite brilliantly. Immensely moving at times, properly chilling at others (not surprising, given its late 1960s setting just as The Troubles get under way) it’s also sweet, charming and funny too. If you can get through it without shedding a quiet tear… well, I’ll be surprised and disappointed.

Directing from his own screenplay, what Branagh depicts is a fictionalised version of the difficult, frightening months in 1969 that eventually led to his own workingclass Protestant family making the decision to move to England.

As Loyalist thugs arrive to force out Catholic neighbours they’ve lived happily next door to for years, Ma (Caitriona Balfe) and Pa (Jamie Dornan) must decide what’s best for their two sons, especially the youngest, the curious and precociously articulate Buddy (Jude Hill). Ah, that’ll be Ken, I think we can safely assume.

With echoes of Alfonso Cuarón’s similarly personal Roma, Branagh shoots the past in beautiful black and white. But, exquisitely, he picks out the things that will offer him his own means of escape – visits to the cinema and theatre – in glorious, life-shaping colour. Look out for the moment when young Buddy is sitting on the kerbside, reading the Marvel comic, Thor. Some 40 years later, Branagh would, of course, direct the film version.

For anyone who grew up around that time, the production design is as evocative as the violent setting is alarming. This is a film full of ‘Oh, I remember that’ moments. But, like everything Branagh is involved with, it’s made by its performances. Yes, Judi Dench is in it – she’s in virtually everything he does – but for once, as Granny, she plays second fiddle.

Young Jude is a fresh-faced joy as Buddy (we’ve surely all known little boys like that) while Jamie Dornan is spot on as his father, already forced to travel to England for work and now having to face down Loyalist gangs when he returns for the weekends. But the stand-out performances belong to Ciarán Hinds, who steals every scene he is in as Buddy’s Pop, and to the beautiful Balfe as Ma. Award nominations are surely heading her way.

Cate Blanchett has already picked up a Screen Actors Guild nomination for her performance as a scheming psychologist in Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley but it’s difficult to see exactly why. She will surely give better performances than this, just as del Toro will surely make better films than this. Like everything he does it looks fabulous and fantastical but it doesn’t really grip. That’s partly because the story has a decidedly unsympathetic central character, played here by Bradley Cooper, and partly because this is a disjointed picture of two separate halves.

The first is set in the darkly threatening atmosphere of a travelling carnival, where we see Stanton Carlisle (Cooper), a man we already know is running away from something nasty, learning the tricks of the trade in a mind-reading act. The second, which involves del Toro turning on the classic ‘film noir’ style so strongly even Citizen Kane comes to mind, sees Carlisle going after much bigger prizes. And taking a very, very long time to do it.

Despite being directed by Denzel Washington, A Journal For Jordan – the story of an ambitious American journalist (Chanté Adams) falling in love with a career soldier (Michael B. Jordan) in the late 1990s is ponderous, poorly written and springs no surprises at all.

Infinitely more uplifting is Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road,a documentary that may give the troubled former Beach Boy an easy ride (he co-produces it) but still manages to be properly revealing, confirms his musical genius and provides the perfect factual companion to the fabulous 2014 dramatisation of his life, Love And Mercy. Good vibrations all round.

Cinema

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2022-01-23T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-01-23T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://mailonline.pressreader.com/article/283016878085596

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