Last night I watched Bloody Sunday, the film that propelled British filmmaker Paul Greengrass to the Hollywood A-list and put him at the helm of hot projects such as The Bourne Supremacy and the upcoming United 93.
Bloody Sunday recreates the events of January 30th 1972, when a peaceful march in protest against the internment without trial of Irish Catholics by Protestant authorities clashed against British troops in Derry, Northern Ireland. Twenty-seven unarmed demonstrators were shot, 14 of whom died. Many were only teenagers. The confrontation and its aftermath fuelled a cycle of violence between Britain and elements of Ireland, North and South, which would last over 25 years.
Bloody Sunday won the Golden Bear in Berlin and the audience award at Sundance. Critics raved about the film when it was released, Rolling Stone calling it “a triumph” and the New York Times “the #1 movie of the year”. It’s easy to see why: the director’s brilliant visual sense and controlled direction serve the story well.
Civil rights leader Ivan Coopers is played by the excellent James Nesbitt, who also comes from a rural Irish working-class background. His performance as a noble, moral leader shaken to the core by the day’s events is remarkable. When his character eventually breaks down as the death toll is announced and guilt mixes with disgust, despair and rage, it is impossible to remain unmoved.
Nesbitt leads a cast that includes many non-professional Derry actors who were there in 1972. Adapted by Paul Greengrass and Don Mullan from first-hand accounts of the march, Bloody Sunday strives for authenticity at every turn, taking the viewer into the action on the very streets where the march took place. Sticking to handheld cameras and refusing any use of music or artificial lighting, he lends the story a potency and intimacy that is always convincing.
Cutting back and forth between the unarmed demonstrators and the British troops prepped for battle is an elegant and effective way to chart the escalating tension. Greengrass shows how a combination of different factors – a minority of troublemakers amongst protesters, a military control post entirely remote from the field, a bloodthirsty regiment of para-militaries, a total lack of communication between marchers and the authorities – combine to trigger violence. In the emotionally devastating final scenes, he lays bare the brutal logic of such conflicts, illustrating how violence feeds upon itself, growing into an uncontrollable beast.
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