Some People Are What the Times Demand

Neil Jordan has made some pretty good films – when he has managed to steer clear of Hollywood. His debut film, Angel (1982), was a daring treatment of violence and murder in the underworld. He followed that with the innovative The Company of Wolves (1984) and the successful Mona Lisa (1986). Then he went to Hollywood and directed two flops: High Spirits (1988) and We're No Angels (1989). Returning to the U.K., Jordan redeemed himself with The Crying Game (1992), which received nominations in six Oscar categories. He followed that success with Interview with the Vampire (1994) and the present film, Michael Collins (1996). Since this film, Jordan has made The Butcher Boy (1997), In Dreams (1999), The End of the Affair (1999), and The Good Thief (2003). Jordan currently has two films in the works: Breakfast on Pluto (2005) in post-production and Me and My Monster (2005) in pre-production. Michael Collins was a film that stirred up a lot of vitriolic responses, dealing as it does with the co-founder of the IRA and the issue of terrorism as a tactic for advancing political objectives.

Historical Background: The antecedents for this film's events lie in the late nineteenth century when the Irish people began demanding "home rule," under which Ireland was to remain part of Great Britain, but have its own parliament for domestic affairs. Most of the people in Ulster (the most northeastern province) opposed the idea because the majority of people in Ulster are Protestants but the majority throughout the rest of Ireland are Catholics. Bills to provide for home rule in Ireland were defeated in the British Parliament in 1886 and 1892. In 1905, an Irish journalist named Arthur Griffith originated a political organization called Sinn Féin, which meant "We Ourselves." The group's aim was to achieve a wholly independent Irish Republic. In 1914, the British Parliament passed a bill providing for home rule in Ireland, but its implementation was delayed by the outbreak of World War I. Most Irish people supported the British effort during World War I, but the military branch of Sinn Féin, known at the time as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and led by Patrick Pearse, felt that Britain's preoccupation with the war provided a golden opportunity for Ireland to achieve full independence. Accordingly the Easter Rebellion was initiated in 1916, but was ruthlessly crushed by the better-trained and better-equipped British forces. The rebellion actually had relatively little support among the Irish people, but when the British subsequently executed fifteen of the IRB's ringleaders, Irish pride and resentment was inflamed. In the next election (1918), the Sinn Féin won 73 out of the 105 Irish seats in the British Parliament. Instead of taking their seats in London, however, these 73 elected Irish officials met in Dublin, formed an Irish House of Representatives, and declared Ireland an independent republic on January 21, 1919.

The Film's Story: After a brief depiction of the Easter Rebellion of 1916, the film's story picks up at about this point, in 1919. When fighting breaks out between the Irish rebels and British forces, Michael Collins (Liam Neeson) organizes the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and introduces tactics of urban guerilla warfare that would prove successful enough to be later imitated by rebel forces and terrorists all over the world. Collins's invisible army would strike suddenly and then disappear back into the masses. "We won't play by the rules, Harry," Collins tells his best friend and close associate, Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn). "We'll make our own."

Collins aims his initial campaign at the British "G-men" – intelligence agents operating out of Dublin. Britain's Prime Minister Churchill initially responds with typical Anglo resolve, sending to Ireland platoons of brutal police called Black and Tans (from the color of their uniforms). The films depicts a group of these agents torturing a suspected IRA captive and one saying, "The problem with the Irish is that they'll sing at the drop of a hat, but ask them to talk and they won't." In 1920, the British Parliament finally passes the Government of Ireland Act, which creates two new nations in former Ireland. Each was to continue to be part of Great Britain. Northern Ireland would encompass six of the nine counties of Ulster where Protestants were in the majority. Southern Ireland would comprise the rest of the island. The Protestant counties of Ulster accept this arrangement but the Irish House of Representatives flatly rejects it, demanding full and unified independence. Following Collins's new methods, IRA operatives began killing British agents, policemen, and soldiers, as well as attacking British installations and government buildings, and then disappearing among the populace. On the night of November 21st, 1920 alone, twenty British agents are killed. The next afternoon, British forces open fire on Irish spectators at a soccer match at Croke Park. Nevertheless, Collins methods are successful enough, by 1921, to encourage readiness on the part of the British government to negotiate a settlement. Collins is sent to London at the head of the Irish negotiating team. The film implies that Eamon De Valera (Alan Rickman), nominal head of state of the fledgling Irish Republic, selects Collins for the task because De Valera feels threatened by Collins's popularity and knows that the British will not agree to terms that will be acceptable to the more radical elements in Ireland.

Indeed, Collins returns with what might charitably be termed half-a-loaf. The British agree to creation of an Irish Free State with so-called "dominion" status, meaning that Ireland will be fully self-governing but remain part of the British Commonwealth, swearing allegiance to the royal family. The British will not budge, however, on the status of Northern Ireland as a separate nation. De Valera refuses to support the treaty and organizes opposition among the faction of hardliners who demand complete independence and union with Northern Ireland. Collins naturally stands behind the treaty that he negotiated, arguing that it is a start and that the remaining objectives can be sought peacefully in the years ahead. The treaty is put to a vote of the people and is approved, but civil war breaks out anyway. Collins is killed early on, at just thirty-one years of age. He had been heading to his home region of West Cork hoping to negotiate a settlement with De Valera.

The film also provides a romantic triangle as a subplot, to ease the dramatic tension periodically with a more personal aspect of the story. Collins and his best friend Harry Boland are each depicted as in love with the same woman, Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts). She's initially no help in solving the dilemma, maintaining an equal degree of friendship with the two, but, in the end, she falls in love with Collins. When Boland returns from a trip to America, the die is cast. He says to Kitty, "I shouldn't have left should I? I was a length ahead. Now where am I?" Kitty responds that it's not a horse race, but it is, and Boland has already lost. Boland does his level best to accept being slighted, but ends up in Eamon de Valera's camp when civil war erupts.

Developments Subsequent to the Film's Story: The fighting later stopped, in 1923, and the two factions formed political parties, continuing their struggle through the political process. De Valera's group became the Sinn Féin Party. After Collins's murder, William T. Cosgrave (Paul Bennett) inherited leadership of Collins's faction, which became the Cumann na nGaedheal Party. Cosgrave served as president of the Executive Committee that governed the Irish Free State from 1922-1932. By then, the old Sinn Féin Party had splintered, with De Valera and the majority forming the new Fianna Fáil Party. De Valera and Fianna Fáil finally came to power in 1932 and, in 1937, De Valera cut all ties with Britain. A new constitution was adopted and De Valera was named the country's first prime minister. In 1948, Fine Gael (formerly the Cumann na nGaedheal Party) regained power and John A. Costello was named prime minister. His government changed the nation's name from the Irish Free State to the Irish Republic. In the following thirty years, the balance of power shifted back and forth regularly between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The balance of power was so tenuous that Fine Gael sometimes found it necessary to form coalition governments with the smaller Labour Party.

Throughout this period of political instability, many Catholics in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland continued to fight for unification. Armed bands from Ireland sometimes raided Northern Ireland. In the late sixties, tensions between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland flared abruptly, with the IRA taking the lead role on the Catholic side of the turmoil, staging car bombings, kidnappings, and other terrorist acts, both in Ireland and in England. Britain sent troops into Northern Ireland in defense of the Protestant government. The majority of Irish people did not support the violent tactics of the IRA nor was the IRA's activities sanctioned by the government of the Irish Republic

Themes: There are perhaps three main political issues raised by this film. I'll side with the Irish on two out of the three and with the English on the third. I imagine that many of you will disagree with me on one or more of these issues. Michael Collins might be called the father of modern terrorism though that likely exaggerates his role a bit. Terrorist tactics predated Collins, would have been invented had Collins never existed, and have been reinvented throughout history to fit the particulars of each conflict that pits a determined but resource-poor group of rebels against a better equipped and established foe. Even George Washington and patriots in Boston and Philadelphia engaged in unconventional warfare tactics. Collins, however, invented some of what has become routine in urban guerilla tactics. Most members of the American and British publics deplore the very notion of terrorism, but one has to recognize that these publics are identified with two of the most powerful nations and political establishments that have ever existed. Britain and America have each usually emerged on top wherever and whenever conflicts have involved mainly conventional warfare. Naturally, people in these nations would greatly prefer to see armed conflicts limited to conventional methods, by which their governments will typically prevail. The British and American governments and establishment presses are highly effective in characterizing terrorist tactics as sleazy, underhanded, and immoral, as if warfare were ever moral or gentlemanly! My personal view is that terrorism is neither more nor less immoral and disgusting than conventional warfare. Opponents locked in mortal conflict will employ whatever tactics are required to win and to minimize their own losses. Indeed, the soldiers who risk their lives in conflict and their families expect leaders to adopt whatever tactics will be most strategically effective. It's true that terrorism is murder but so too is all warfare. The only further restriction in judging the morality of specific tactics is the law of proportionality, but I'll omit that from the present discussion so as not to proceed too far astray.

All violent tactics are deplorable but, in assessing the moral standing of such actions, one has to focus on the core issue, which is the righteousness of the underlying cause or lack thereof. When a nation's people are defending themselves against invasion, repression, slavery, or systematic exploitation, any tactic that is effective and proportionate can be justified. If the cause is not just, there is no violent tactic that can be justified. The differences that erupted as violence between the Irish and the English (and later between Collins's faction in the civil war and that of De Valera) related to two basic issues: (1) Irish independence from Great Britain, and (2) Northern Ireland's independence from the Irish Republic vs. unification. My usual inclination is to side with people who want independence in preference to sharing political amalgamation with another group that they view as antagonistic. (I make an exception to my general rule in the case of the American Civil War because the desire of the Confederacy for independence was based in large part on wanting to maintain a flagrantly immoral system: slavery.) Thus, I side with the Irish of 1920 in their desire for full independence from England but, for essentially the same reason, I side with the Protestant majority in Ulster in their desire to maintain independence from the Irish Republic. My personal view is that the tactics employed by the IRA during the early twenties to achieve independence, depicted in the present film, were justifiable because the chief motivation was freedom from British colonialism. Similar and descendant tactics used during the sixties and beyond, on the other hand, were morally deplorable, since the objective had shifted from seeking independence to suppressing the independence of Northern Ireland. As I've said in many of my film reviews, the capacity to oppress is a universal human potential. Those who were once oppressed are not immune from the temptation to oppress others. Some English reviewers take great exception to the present film, claiming it is "ammunition for IRA recruiting sergeants and fund-raisers" or a film for which "every copy should be found, spat upon, and burned." In the years covered by this film, the moral high ground belonged to the Irish and the IRA. The IRA later removed itself to the moral gutter.

Production Values: The history depicted in the film Michael Collins is not uniformly accurate. For the most part, the inaccuracies are matters of dramatic license, aimed at enhancing the film's entertainment value. There does not appear to be intent to misrepresent the truth for propaganda purposes. The inaccuracies include compressions of time scale, compressions of two of more historical characters into a single film character, distortions of the roles played by various characters, and manipulations of details. If you're so inclined, you can find detailed discussions of the deviations from fact in various reviews published on the internet. Such alterations of historical fact are commonplace in dramatic films based on historical events. I prefer to review this film mainly as dramatic art rather than an historical treatise. The film's treatment of Eamon De Valera is perhaps the most suspect. The film has made some assumptions of guilt and duplicity on the part of De Valera that are not expressly supported by historical evidence. One example of this is the inference that De Valera sent Collins to Britain as negotiator with the express expectation that his mission would fail. The other instance is the assumption that De Valera was directly involved in the murder of Collins. In 1966, Eamon De Valera supposedly said, "It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time, history will record the greatness of Michael Collins and it will be recorded at my expense." Neil Jordan's film seems to have accomplished exactly that.

Some critics dismiss the interludes pertaining to the love triangle as irrelevant or, worse, ineffective, but I found those segments effective for changing tempo between action segments. The romantic element is not especially moving, but it serves a narrative purpose. Heroes are always more interesting when we are allowed to observe both their personal and their public lives. One of the strongest aspects of this film is that its central character, Michael Collins, is a complex, almost mythically tragic, character. Jordan has succeeded beautifully in showing Collins as a heroic but flawed person. Collins is a tormented man with a talent for orchestrating violent mayhem but an antipathy for what he does so well. "I hate them for making it necessary," he says. He deplores the violence and it is his willingness to compromise at the bargaining table, in search of an honorable peace, that ultimately costs him his life.

Jordan has painstakingly recreated 1920's Ireland for this film. There's a distinct grandeur to the visuals and a darkness that gives the film a moody, brooding quality. The costumes are magnificent, at times, such as during the ceremony in which the British flag is lowered and exchanged for the Irish one. Collins turns to his counterpart and comments, "So, that's what caused all the bother." The soundtrack is very effective in supporting the film's dramatic impact.

Liam Neeson is full of passionate energy in his portrayal of Collins. He also has the physical stature to play the Irish patriot who was sometimes called simply "The Big Fella." Neeson won a Best Actor award from the Venice film festival. Some of his other film appearances were in Excalibur (1981), The Mission (1986), Schindler's List (1993), The Haunting (1999), Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), Gangs of New York (2002), and Love Actually (2003). Also excellent are Aidan Quinn as Harry Boland and Stephen Rea as Ned Broy. Quinn's other work has included parts in Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), The Mission (1986), Stakeout (1987), Practical Magic (1998), and In Dreams (1998). The character Ned Broy was actually an amalgam of three associates of Collins. Rea gives the part a quiet intensity that contrasts nicely with Neeson's performance. Rea, a regular in Jordan's films, also worked in The Company of Wolves (1984), The Crying Game (1992), The Butcher Boy (1997), and In Dreams (1998). I've usually like Alan Rickman's work, but he overuses his distinctively slow speech pattern and it didn't wear well for me in the present film. He's appeared elsewhere in Die Hard (1988), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Galaxy Quest (1999), Dogma (1999), and Love Actually (2003). Julia Roberts is little more than a pretty cipher in this film, but she manages the role with characteristic grace.

Bottom-Line: The Warner Brothers DVD for this film provides a good quality widescreen transfer and Dolby digital 5.1 sound. Extras include a documentary featuring a Neil Jordan Interview and actual footage of the real Michael Collins, production notes, scene access, and a theatrical trailer. The soundtrack can be heard in either English or French. Optional subtitles are available in English, French, and Spanish.

This is a strong dramatic film with a great lead performance by Liam Neeson. For those whose primary interest is the study of Irish history, there will be disappointments with the liberties that Jordan takes with some of the facts. For those with strong feelings about the IRA and its tactics, then or now, there are likely to be strong feelings evoked by the film, either for, against, or mixed. On the other hand, for those approaching the film primarily for its dramatic content together with a generally informative look at the Irish independence movement, there's much about this film that will please. This film is rated "R." I highly recommend it for adults who enjoy action and war films and historical dramas. I do not recommend it for children.