Belfast – Film Review

A semi-autobiographical film that chronicles the life of a working-class family and their young son’s childhood during the tumult of the late 1960s in the Northern Ireland capital.

Right from the opening sequence all the way down to the emotionally charged final few minutes, Kenneth Branagh‘s Belfast is most certainly an Oscar movie if I’ve ever seen one. This has the Academy written all over it. Some are going to find this to be an outrageously boring slog with nothing to really say, whereas others are going to get quite a kick out of seeing how this ordinary family operates on a day-to-day basis in the midst of a terrible time in their life. I fall in the latter group of people.

This film is the definition of a slice-of-life movie. From the minute it begins all the way to the end, it essentially follows an ordinary family as they traverse their struggles, trying to decide whether or not they want to leave their beloved city of Belfast to go on to bigger and better things. At the moment, Belfast is not a great place for them to live. They see frequent violent riots happening in the streets and many people have died there as a result of this. It grows increasingly dangerous every day, especially for young Buddy (Jude Hill).

Buddy has a normal life – he goes to school, has a few friends, and even has a huge crush on a girl that he wants so desperately to talk to but just can’t find the courage to do so. He thinks of Belfast as a whole as his home, and he just doesn’t feel comfortable or safe anywhere else. Despite the fact that he recognizes how many riots and violent occurrences have transpired in and around the city, he views it as the only place for him. But his parents grow worried. They don’t want their young son to grow up in such a dangerous environment.

These are essentially the ideas that Belfast touches upon. Do you want to move away from home to potentially go on to live in a much more peaceful, prosperous environment? And if you do, what are you going to leave behind? Is it your closest family and your best memories? What if, when you move somewhere else, you realize that there is absolutely no place for you there and you’ve just made a grave mistake? Belfast aims to explore these ideas and it does so in genuinely beautiful ways.

Although I will say that the film is quite poorly paced, sadly. Despite the fact that this movie runs at a breezy ninety-eight minutes, it feels just over two hours long and that’s mainly because certain sequences drag on for far too long and some scenes could’ve just been removed entirely. But the problem is that if they removed some scenes, the movie wouldn’t have even been ninety minutes. Belfast can be a bit of a drag at times, but thankfully, Branagh’s clever writing oftentimes comes out strong on top.

And the performances here certainly make it hard for you to look away. Jude Hill does a wonderful performance as the young boy, Buddy, here, delivering such a sense of warmth and charm to the point where it’s near impossible not to smile about his curiosities about the world. Caitríona Balfe is an absolute knockout here as Ma, who delivers such a nuanced and layered performance, and one that I could absolutely see getting nominated for an Academy Award. The same thing can be said about Jamie Dornan and Ciarán Hinds.

Plus the cinematography is without a doubt some of the best I’ve seen all year. Haris Zambarloukos really knows exactly how to make the city of Belfast in the 1960s feel so alive and bustling. Despite the fact that we don’t see a whole bunch of people populating the streets in this film, you get the sense that this place has been lived in and worn down, and it’s largely in part due to Zambarloukos’ cinematography and Branagh’s direction.

All of these wonderful elements truly make Belfast a true standout and an absolute front-runner at the upcoming Academy Awards next year. Despite the fact that it’s certainly not without its fair share of flaws, Belfast is a heartfelt and honest movie about life, love, and family.