A Star, A Terrible Beauty, Is Born: Neil Jordan's Troubling Epic, Michael
Collins
Eamon Develera (Alan Rickman), Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn), and Michael
Collins (Liam Neeson) at the Easter Rising
Neil Jordan took a huge risk with his revisionist biopic, Michael Collins.
The British, who live daily with the consequences of Collins' guerrilla
legacy, are bound to be offended by a film which deems such tactics necessary,
and at times, even charming. And fellow Irishmen are unlikely to be pleased
by Jordan's demonization of their first president, Eamon Develera (played
by Hollywood's favorite bad guy, Alan Rickman). Which leads me to believe
that Jordan was betting that American audiences and critics would go for
this big budget epic, a thought further supported by the inclusion of Julia
Roberts as the apex of the films's love triangle. How odd that the product
of this Irish director working with a largely Irish cast and crew, filming
on location in Ireland, is the very American movie, Michael Collins.
.
Taken at face value, Michael Collins is an excellent film. Jordan
has successfully made the tricky leap from Independent filmmaker to big-budget
Hollywood director. The film's crowning jewel is the Coppola-esque assassination
scene in which shots of the Cork country side, filled with rat-like sharpshooters
on their way to the ambush are interspliced with shots of Julia Roberts
trying on her bridesmaids dress. All the while, Sinead O'Connor sings a
spine-tingling rendition of "He Moves Through the Fair." This
is the sort of operatic minefield that tripped-up a pro like Coppola in
the final sequence of his Godfather Trilogy, but Jordan navigates
it with astounding grace, yielding up just the right amount of romantic
pathos to end the grim tale.
Avoiding the Merchant-Ivory temptation to make the past too pretty, Jordan
captures the misty shit-hole essence of an occupied colony, and the rubble-filled
slums of Sean O'Casey's Ireland. His county Cork is so filthy and run-down
I was glad it wasn't filmed in smell-o-vision, and his Dublin is beautifully
dank. Jordan may have invented a new hybrid genre, the noir epic. Haunting
images of Collins on his antique bicycle, (not since Jules et Jim,
has a director made such effective use of the vehicle) riding through the
foggy Dublin night give the film an eerie, unshakably cold feeling. Many
of the daytime scenes have a stark, bleached look, an effect of the Irish
sun in winter. The only warmth in Michael Collins is generated by sheer
chemistry between the actors.
Like Lawrence of Arabia, Michael Collins is fueled by an almost
sexual tension between warriors who represent rival factions. Collins (Liam
Neeson), Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn) and Eamon Develera (Alan Rickman) literally
sleep in the same bed together, end to end of course, as they plot escapes
and "mayhem" designed to undermine the British rule of Ireland.
The relationship between these three is so vital that when Julia Roberts
does appear as the love interest Kitty Kiernan, she fades into the background
quickly. To be fair, Roberts was given the daunting task of looking more
beautiful than her male co-stars, and her Dublin accent is subtler than
most American attempts at a brogue.
Jordan breathes new life into cinematic clichés about Ireland. In
my favorite scene, Jordan recalls The Dead and The Quiet Man
as Liam Neeson drags a fussing Julia Roberts through the streets of Dublin
and into the lobby of the Gresham Hotel. I half-expected this bizarre homage
to end with the presentation of "a stick to beat the pretty lady with,"
but Neeson's John Wayne machismo backfires and he draws horrified stares
from the hotel's snooty patrons. Jordan saves The Dead's snow "general
all over Ireland" for a dramatic roof top scene between Neeson and
Quinn, in which ash from the burning Custom's House falls fluffy and white
and sticks to their lashes. This surreal and romantic "snow" falls
gently on the two men as they watch helplessly as members of their guerrilla
army are murdered by police.
One of the film's strongest perfomances comes from Stephen Rea (The Crying
Game) as an Irishman who works as a Biristh Intelligence agent. Collins
befriends the man who is assigned to trail him and convinces Rea to get
him into the Castle, the center of British rule in Dublin. Hitchcockian
suspense is used in these scenes and afterward Neeson and Rea remind me
of Claude Raines and Humphrey Bogart in Cassablanca.
The most troubling aspect of Michael Collins is what's omitted in
its revision of Irish history. The fact that Collins' faction of the IRA
executed more prisoners at Kilmainham Gaol that the British ever did, is
completely ignored. This might be acceptable if the film didn't open with
the British executions after the Easter Rising. Instead, Jordan substitutes
failed friendship and Quinn's death at the hands of Neeson's flunkies to
illustrate this point. Unfortunately, most American audiences don't know
enough about the Irish Civil War to understand where the film summarizes
and those that do, will probably be too distracted by the spectacular chase
scene beneath the Guinness Brewery to care much about history.
The controversial script implies that Eamon Develera ordered Collins' assassination,
for which there is no historical evidence. Although from what I've read
on Irish web discussion groups, it appears that they are open to rethinking
their first president. The Irish are in the midst of a re-birth of their
culture and a new appreciation of history is at the center of this renaissance.
Knowing that Michael Collins will cause people to debate and re-examine
Ireland's painful history, if only to refute the script, is perhaps Jordan's
greatest achievement.