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The
production notes (http://www.h3themovie.com)
inform that a sign was hung up on Bray's Ardmore Studios
set for those playing the 1981 blanketmen: 'COLD HUNGRY
SCARED'. The film opens as a single maggot crawls
over the mattress of Seamus Scullion (Brendan Mackey),
setting up expectations of a gritty filthy docudrama
or a biopic of Bobby Sands (Mark O'Halloran) and his
comrades. Instead, a surprisingly antiseptic, even
detached look at anonymity and boredom begins the
plot of 'H3'. Especially in the early part of the
story, the unshorn blanketmen assume (ironically 'uniform')
camaraderie that erases much of their distinctive
dossiers. With the notable exception of the shivering
new kid on the block, the teenaged Declan McCann (Aidan
Campbell), the veterans on the wings appear remarkably
fit, well-fed, and blasé. No more maggots are
seen in the film, at least from my row in the theatre;
the cells appear quite clean considering their excremental
coatings. Likewise, their prison guards swing and
swagger largely bereft of individual detail. While
the efforts of the screenwriters (veterans of Long
Kesh both; McKeown of the 1981 protest) seek to differentiate
the various refusals to conform, the direction hurries
along the pace of their predicament.
For
instance, a brief flashback shows a dreamlike account
of Seamus' arrest, but otherwise we have no backstory
to fill in for him, other than his advice to cellmate
Declan that "the first ten years" are toughest.
While we know Declan's from Tyrone (his youthful introduction
affords the audience a chance to be told the intricacies
of the block by the old cellmate, and he serves as
a stand-in for the young prisoners who, the same age
roughly as McKeown was in 1981, must learn when to
shout back and when to stay silent), his lack of explanation
for his imprisonment (beyond a vague line by a policeman)
obscures his past experience and forces one to focus
only on his present incarceration. Probably deliberate,
the film's downplaying of the republican actions that
led to imprisonment heightens valiant roles given
to the blanketmen, but leaves the spectator little
clue as to what precisely animates the faith and the
vision possessed by those on the dirty protest. The
demands met and unmet by the prison officers and the
British, while explained, remain buried in the expository
script, and overall the intent of the republicans
to seek political status--and eventually to place
Sands in the running for Parliament--remains blurred,
especially for any viewer coming to this film with
but a cursory knowledge of the context of early 1980s
republicanism and the past history of the earlier
hunger strike and the failure to gain such demands.
It also is unabashedly pro-republican.
Most
effective in this film prove the details familiar
to readers of McKeown's two books: the passing of
the comms across the corridors; the sceal spoken and
sung; relieving one's self in the corner of the cell;
the mirror searches; even the melodramatic touch of
all the prisoners over all the blocks joining in 'A
Nation Once Again'. Ray Harman's electronic score
adds tension to the early scenes, especially as seen
through Declan's fresh eyes; later, however, the synthesised
swelling into bathos diminishes the power of the images
(all sickly greens and fluorescent concrete captured
coolly by cinematographer Owen McPolin) as the decision
unfolds to undertake a hunger strike.
McKeown
and Campbell's script deftly adds subtle strokes.
When Declan is asked what music's popular on the outside,
he responds: 'Police. Madness. The Undertones.' Appropriate
choices--two that highlight the conditions of the
outside North; the third, of course, the response
of Derry's pop stars. Furthermore, he is cajoled to
assay the 'Tones' 'My Cousin Kevin'--the tale of a
'mamma's pride and joy, his mother's little golden
boy' the opposite of such a lad as Declan, at least
by conventional standards. Later, when asked where
else he'd rather be, Declan opts for Rio de Janeiro;
Seamus picks Conamara. Nothing further is said. The
viewer is left to ponder the choice each character
makes, and why.
Post-wash
and haircuts, the characters on C and D wings emerge
more easily distinguished, and the plot shifts to
Seamus' boyhood pal Ciaran (Dean-Lennox Kelly) , who
sees the protests as futile and puts on the squeaky
boots (although you can't hear them in the film--a
touch I was expecting as he paced down the corridor
shod). Another comrade, Madra (Tony Devlin) allows
in his visits with his wife the only female appearance
in the movie, as his determination to join the hunger
strike wavers against the competing claims of family.
These characters and more allow the story to move
towards the climax. Bobby Sands' decline remains a
subplot, and the gentle treatment of his leadership
through O'Halloran's understated performance allows
the film's focus to remain on those left behind by
their martyrs, those who must endure and live.
Sudden
tensions upset the dull routine, and in the film's
most exciting moment, the news over the smuggled radio
that Sands has been elected M.P. at first is quashed
by jumping and giggling by Declan and then Seamus;
as the impact of the unexpected victory sinks in,
shouts erupt and spread over the compound, met by
the stony stares of the guards. McPolin's hand-held
camera, trapped by the confines of the cells, conveys
the pressures within contained and then released.
A
final note of appreciation for the decision to keep
a significant amount of the dialogue in Jailic. Fascinating
in its subversion of Gaelic, this invented dialect
expresses the true force of the republican ideal better
than the images or performances alone. For it makes
the familiar elements of the prison movie that even
its makers had to resort to in dramatising it for
the big screen--the wide-eyed newbie, the hardened
lifer vs. his weak buddy who gives in, the frustrated
wife, the currency of tobacco, the heroic but doomed
leader, the good cop amidst the bad cops--unfamiliar
and therefore more powerful. Despite the conventional
plot points and reduction of ideological battles to
brief chunks of explanatory dialogue, the young actors
do justice in recording a life now history. With many
playing the blanketmen their twenties themselves,
barely conscious at best of the real strike, the largely
Northern Irish cast enables 1981 to return for a new
generation of viewers. As Declan stops Seamus from
ripping up his comms: 'Someday people will want to
read them.' Seamus, bemused, wonders: 'so you're writing
the history books, then? What ever happened to the
lad from Tyrone?' Through Declan's alter ego McKeown
and his comrade Campbell (who appear in cameos as
prison guards!), the captive voices emerge in H3's
script and image. They render in two tongues a report
by 1981's survivors, adding at last to the increasingly
assured language of Irish film their fluent sceal.
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