What is it like to be part of a family as large as a nation? If that family is the city of Belfast and that nation is the Irish, then Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast gives us quite the clue. Effectively, this film is a love letter to the Irish people — and everything in it suggests that “the Irish” refers only to those who share a common ethnicity. Yes, there are a smattering of Asians in the film — which may be realistic, given that the story takes place in 1969 — but these so-called “people of color” are not employed against history as props but as fittingly minor aspects of the Belfast backdrop. This story is about the Irish and the Irish only. (more…)
Counter-Currents