Brian Gardner reviews Neil Jordan's film, Michael Collins For many bourgeois commentators, the release of a tilm about a hero of the Irish national revolution is an act beyond the pale.
Their fear is that particularly in America the film will encourage support for the present IRA and cause damage to a peace process in which that organisation is not currently invo ved.
Some of these same commentators have criticised the film for its lack of historical accuracy. impiving that this in itself leads to the glorification of the eponymous hero. It is certainly true that in its dramatic reconstruction of some six years of Irish history, the film alters the sequence of some crucial events and skirts over others.
For example, after Collins has successfully sprung Eamonn de Valera from Lincoln prison, virtually the next Ining we see is the crowa s adulation of the Sinn Fein leader in a parade through Dublin. An audience with ittle knowieage or ine polltical events of the time might well be confused as to why this enemy of the British state is not immediately rearrested.
It is not explained that in the month tollowing de Valera's escape, the government released all Irish political prisoners. It was at wis moment tnat de Valera became President of Sinn Fein's self-styled Irish Republic; in the film he already holds this position in 1918, before the party's spectacular success in the British general election of that year.
Dramatic motif
However, this change in the historical sequence does provide for one of the film's central dramatic motifs - the beautifulv understated tension between liam Neeson's Collins and Alan Rickman's de Valera.
From the outset the President of the Republic is portrayed as a cold diplomat, seeing it as more useful to go off to America and gain support there than to participate fully in the armed insurrection at home. As the commander in chiet ot inis insurrection, Collins is useful to his friend Dev but he is also a threat.
Where the film scores with complete historical accuracy is in de Valera's use of Collins to negotiate peace with the British government and the formation of the Irish Free State. The shrewd leader distances himself from a new state which does not include the six counties of Ulster and which requires members of its parliament to swear an oath of allegiance to a British king.
Some critics see Neeson's nortraval of Collins as lacking depth, and while to a certain extent I think this is true, the fault is not so much with Neeson the actor as with Jordan the scriptwriter and director. Collins, the working class lad from Cork and man of action. is pitted against the cold intellectualism of de Valera - a man with few ideas other than his central obsession, the struggle for liberation. In the absence of knowing anything else about nis intellectual me, we could be forgiven for imagining that perhaps he was something of a socialist. In reality ne belleved in the establishment of a Napoleonic dictatorship to prevent communism gaining a foothold.
No characters in the film ever mention the dreaded S or C words and the national struggle is a romantic one, for the liberation of a land and people. The tragic outcome of this struggle is me eva war Deween ise wo republican factions and the assassination of Collins by de Valera's nenchmen Despite all of these misgivings, this is an exceptional film - while it serves to shore up many of the myths surrounding the irish national struggle, it also succeeds in debunking others.
i shows cleariv that ine riso state was not born without bloody internal strife. And when it comes to depicting ine repressive, murderous and often genocidal actions of the British state, Jordan pulls no punches. All of this is no bad thing in a film financed by Hollywood and with a wide commercial release.
Technically, it is more than proficient, and at its beginning and end, two wonderfully edited sequences, in their emotional power, hit you straight in the gut.
As Collins travels towards his ambush, his intended spouse is purchasing her wedding apparel in a Dublin store. As she does this and as ine assassins take up tel positions, Neeson as Collins: a vivid portrayal of the working class lad pitted against the cynical intellectual de Valera