Bloody Sunday

No jokes this time. My last review had bad enough jokes. Just previews here. INTACTO–I couldn’t really figure out what this movie was all about, but it looks kinda cool. It’s got Max von Sydow in it (always a good sign) and he seems to be controlling a game of chance. The contestants put blindfolds on and have to survive their day while people are chasing them.

Ok, so it doesn’t sound like much to hear me describe it, but it looked really cool. I probably won’t think about it again (or any of these movies, for that matter) until video, but I do want to check it out.

DAS EXPERIMENT–Finally, Moritz Bleibtreu (Lola’s boyfriend in Run Lola Run) gets a movie released over here. It’s surprising that it didn’t happen a little earlier, but I guess Franka Potente was the real breakout there.

This flick has something to do with an experiment (really!) where they stick people in a prison and make half of them guards and half of them prisoners. It looks pretty interesting, especially when things take a turn for the weird. Maybe a predictable thriller, but I’ll check it out at some point.

ROGER DODGER–Campbell Scott is a ladies’ man. No, really. He is. He scores every night with some anonymous hottie. That’s why his nephew comes to visit him. You see, Nick can’t score. Maybe he’s a bit young to be worrying about it, but he is…of course. He’s in high school. What else does he have to worry about?

This looks like a funny little coming of age flick where the kid finds out that the adults don’t know all. (NO! That can’t be right!) The preview is really funny and I’m always up for a good Campbell Scott movie.

Now comes the hard part. Bloody Sunday.

Films can make us laugh, cry, feel a little sick, or pee our pants out of fear. (Well, not me. Really! Stop poking me!!) But the truly important films are the ones that remind us of dark periods in our history. They anger us. They make us remember that there is evil out there and it has always been with us.

On January 30th 1972 in Derry, Ireland, just such dark events went down. 27 innocent people were shot and 13 killed in the streets during a peaceful demonstration for the Civil Rights of the Irish people. They were sick and tired of being controlled by the British government, of not having representation, of not having a voice. And Ivan Cooper (James Nesbitt from Waking Ned Devine) thinks that it’s high time someone do something about it.

Ivan is a member of Parliament (the governing body, not the funksters) and is trying to organize the peaceful protest. His heroes are Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. He doesn’t want problems, he wants solutions.

Gerry (Declan Duddy) is a young man who is also fed up. He is 17 years old and is tired of his friends being oppressed. He wants to be a part of the march even though his girlfriend and parents warn him that it may not be such a great idea.

On the other side of things is Major General Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith). He is the man in charge of the British Army in Derry and wants to keep order and discipline. He’s got armed guards at every turn and trucks filled with more soldiers ready to stop any violence that might start that day.

Unfortunately, he and his men are a little too ready for violence. When a couple of kids start throwing rocks, the soldiers start throwing bullets. And things just get worse from there.

Before seeing this film I really didn’t know too much about what happened that day apart from what was in U2′s song, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” (Bono was, I believe, an eyewitness to the slaughter. He was sitting on a hillside watching it all happen.) The film tells us both sides of the story, making sure to show that neither side is completely innocent. (Except for most of the people who were shot. They really didn’t have much to do with anything. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.) There were IRA guys there with guns who were ready to open fire. They were there against Ivan’s wishes, but they were still there.

Still, it is mostly the fault of the British soldiers. A lot of them were scared kids just like the victims, but some of them were overzealous assholes who felt that the Irish needed to be beaten down.

Director/writer Paul Greengrass keeps the tension throughout the film by making it a documentary. That’s really the only way to describe it. Spielberg even took a break from that style after the battles, but Greengrass keeps the grainy handheld going throughout and we really feel like we’re watching events unfold in front of us. As if we’re witnesses to the horror. Even the press conferences (a different kind of horror) are shot this way.

The acting is on par with the direction here. They are all so natural that I forgot that I recognized a few of these guys. (Not many because so many of them are Irish and British actors or first-timers.) No stand-outs really, but no slackers, either. They were all great.

Of course they were all acting out their history, so that may have helped.

This film really made me wonder how we can do this kind of thing to ourselves. How could the British aristocracy turn Ireland, one of the greenest, most beautiful bits of land on the planet, into a virtual demilitarized zone? Fucking Ireland! It’s supposed to be a Democracy! It’s part of the British Empire! It should be peaceful. Why did the Brits want these people under their thumb for so long? Why is it still not peaceful there?

As I walked out of the theatre listening to the strains of a moving live version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” I thought about our situation today. Our own government may not be far away from doing this kind of thing to us. Maybe Bush should be forced to watch this movie Clockwork Orange style. Maybe then he would see what it means for a government to get out of control.

Then again, maybe the message would be lost on him.