In my mind, I am asked to write a short introduction for a special screening, and of all the movies being considered for Oscars this year, I feel I am most qualified to introduce this one. Sir Ken, for you.
Picture an innocent figure, framed by a window, through which a dark hulking tank can be seen rolling past. Imagine a boy and a woman, separated by time and space and language and culture, but both rapt and confused by this scene before them. This black and white shot serves to depict the profound confusion of a moment when life suddenly splinters all notions of certainty.
The boy is from The Silence, written and directed by Ingmar Bergman in 1963. The woman is from Belfast, written and directed by Kenneth Branagh over five decades later. Both filmmakers have been influenced and inspired by Shakespeare, and both have made a career of working on stage and screen. Both of them have even made filmed versions of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. But while Bergman has always famously laid his soul bare through his work, Branagh, staying true to his self-possessed Irishness, has held his feelings close to the vest his entire career.
Ken Branagh, embodying another great Irish tradition, will talk your ear off if you give him the chance. He is famously generous with his acting and directing, unfettered in sharing his process, his thoughts, influences and entertaining anecdotes surrounding his artistic efforts. Until now, he has been just as famously private about what lives in his soul.
His heart very often reveals itself through his passions for Shakespeare and classic film, mysteries and music. We all know, through his films and stage productions, that he loves a good Hamlet, a Fred and Ginger musical, or an intriguing whodunnit. We all know he loves to keep the same group of collaborators through the decades, often employing a repertoire of actors as well as his favorite composer Patrick Doyle and cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos. He has been friend, brother, and father figure to nearly everyone he has met and by sheer force of will, can charm anyone into being part of his next project.
But now, with Belfast, we see why his character has taken this shape. The things that have haunted him for fifty years have not only been exposed, but compelled to pull their weight. Bergman described this as being able to “hitch my demons to my chariot… forced to make themselves useful.”
We see so much framed in this film—within windows, doorways, walls, and TV screens. Parents, grandparents, cousins. Westerns, adventures, and Star Trek. Frames—big or small, simple or ornate, new or old—give us perspective. Two lockdowns—the very local Troubles in Ireland and the global COVID Pandemic—have framed Ken’s life and pressed him into revealing what happens when a seed of creativity roots in the rubble of shattered innocence. He was raised by a village in an idyll that was not meant to last. As indomitable as we may feel our world to be, it is equally as fragile.
Belfast shows us that a bright and curious little boy has always been seeking to recreate that warm familial feeling he used to have on that tiny street in Northern Ireland. It’s quintessential Ken, focussing a deeply specific lens on his singular experience. But in the beautiful nature of truly great art, Belfast becomes universal. Anyone who has lost something in life or been coerced to leave something behind, but still carries it in their hearts, will see themselves framed there.
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