October
2, 2002
| Actions speak louder and more coherently than words in Bloody Sunday,
Paul Greengrass' brutally gripping yet coolly distanced drama about
the massacre of Irish Catholic protesters by British troops during a
civil rights march in the Northern Ireland town of Derry on Jan. 30,
1972.
Sternly
avoiding the heart-tugging tricks and sentimental characterizations
of manipulative melodrama, Greengrass strips his true-life tale to its
raw essentials while filming in a style best described as faux
melodrama.
It
doesn't matter whether you're seeing a stolen moment shared by two young
lovers, or a tight-lipped confab among British officers in a strategy
session, or a horrendous street scene that steadily escalates while
bringing out the worst in stone-throwing militants and gun-toting soldiers.
Each scene appears to be recorded on the sly, stealthily filmed with
a herky-jerky, hand-held camera. The colors are bleached, the images
are stark. You get the impression that you're witnessing random shots
of cinema verité, not a meticulously designed narrative,
as Bloody Sunday carries you through key events of a single day
- before, during and after the infamous massacre - with the relentless
inevitability of Greek tragedy.
Everyone
seems to be talking at the same time - mostly, but not exclusively,
in thick Irish accents - and a good 30 to 50 percent of the dialogue
is well-nigh indecipherable. (I'm looking forward to watching a DVD
version of the film, so I can click on the "English subtitles"
option.) And yet, remarkably enough, the movie rarely is too confusing
to easily follow. Even amid the most cacophonous din, key phrases are
perfectly, chillingly clear: "We're planning a peaceful
march." "Our job is to catch these hooligans." "Those
weren't rubber bullets…"
Amid
the artfully sustained blur of verisimilitude, only a few members of
the cast are able to assert themselves as distinct individuals. With
a minimum of obvious effort, Tim Pigott-Smith vividly conveys a uniquely
colonialist strain of self-righteous monstrousness as Maj. Gen. Ford,
commander of British Army ground forces in Northern Ireland. Nicholas
Farrell comes off as slightly more sympathetic, if only because he occasionally
appears torn by grave doubts and second thoughts, as Brigadier Patrick
Maclellan.
The
most affecting performance comes from James Nesbitt as Ivan Cooper,
the Parliament minister and civil rights activist who evokes the nonviolent
spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King while organizing the ill-fated
march in Derry. Nesbitt wants to protest the British government's policy
of "internment without trial" for allegedly dangerous militants
in Northern Ireland. (Sound familiar?) After the massacre, however,
Nesbitt mournfully recognizes that nonviolence has been discredited,
perhaps permanently, and more violent opposition will grow.
Addressing
representatives of the British government, he delivers his grievously
prescient judgment: "You have given the IRA the biggest victory
it will ever have. You will reap the whirlwind."