By an odd coincidence, I watched Braveheart
on the same day as Michael Collins, which offered, by way of
contrast, a useful insight into why Neil Jordan’s influential biopic of one of
the heroes of Ireland’s fight for independence just doesn’t work.
Michael Collins begins
with the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent shootings in Kilmainham Gaol,
which caused public favour to fall behind the revolutionary nationalists. The
film then jumps forward to 1918 and the beginnings of the War of Independence
and then into the Treaty, which caused the partition of Ireland as well as the
end of the war. Shortly after came the Irish Civil War between the pro-Treaty
government of the Irish Republic, led provisionally by military chief Michael
Collins, and the anti-Treaty rebels, incensed by the partition and Ireland’s
status as a dominium of Britain, led by Éamon de Valera, Collins’ old commander
and previously the President of the Irish Republic. Collins was killed at the
age of 31 in Béal na mBláth, near where he was born, during a tour of West Cork.
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The above is more of a potted history of
Michael Collins than a description of the plot of the film, though it offers
about as much insight into the history of the time as the film does. The film
is primarily about the events and the circumstances and it will introduce
novices to such things as the Black and Tans, the Twelve Apostles, the Cairo
Gang, and the Bloody Sunday of 1920. But it does not go much further than that,
readdressing each event from the perspective of an international audience and
the rules of the three-act structure. As a result, it rushes through the events
and loses sight of, as the title would suggest, its main subject. Michael
Collins (Liam Neeson) is a bit of a cipher in the film, as is Éamon de Valera (Alan Rickman), played,
for the sake of simplicity, as egotistical and unrepentantly evil. In Neil
Jordan’s carefully timed and paced version of events, both characters move
between a variety of registers without much sense of an inner consistency.
Every decision that de Valera makes seems ridiculously stupid but it couldn’t
be otherwise because the film spends no time whatsoever in trying to create a
sense of what he is thinking of. Similarly, Collins is played as a fun-loving
joker who will do anything that a man has to do for freedom but will be
alternately ruthless and depressed about it. In Jordan’s rigid subservience to
historical events, simplicity and pacing, he does both of them, and nearly
every other character, a disservice.
Compared, oddly, to Braveheart,
which has been named one of the most historically inaccurate films of recent
times, but that nonetheless managed to convey the passions and sacrifices of a
fight for national independence. Although the real events and the real life
Wallace’s character are far from what the film represents, the film succeeds
nonetheless as a rousing entertainment of national heroism overcoming foreign
subjugation. If the facts are false, at least the emotions are not and the film
represents such nationalism, as it must feel to those committed to national
struggles. None of this matters as much as the fact that we never lose sight of
William Wallace, the character as played by Mel Gibson. We see his inner
struggles, his dark almost animalistic side, his wisdom and his refusal to deny
his beliefs – and, crucially, we see how the myths that generate about Wallace
are comically inaccurate. The film is simplistic, overly macho and full of
falsehoods, but it is a fantastic, old-fashioned epic.
Michael Collins,
meanwhile, is not. It works neither as a historical record of the events nor as
a hagiographic, rousing spectacle. It ends up being a toothless beast, which
fails to bring across either the character of the man (neither fictional nor
real) or the significance of the events depicted. It refers to the events with
an emphasis that excludes all else, but presents them so simplistically in
shades of black and white that nothing of interest can be learned from them. It
also refigures them to assist the sentimentalised drama and the running time.
Neither does it get a sense of its characters, being both hagiographic in its
attempts to make a hero out of Michael Collins and also assisting in mystifying
the character more through its terribly inconsistent and unfocused
characterization. Short, sporadic scenes will show a likable Collins at home
and enjoying himself, but these scenes don’t add up and often feel misplaced.
Elsewhere, the film shows only a man going through historical motions.
Only rarely does Jordan’s
strategy make sense. We briefly get a sense of one of Jordan’s apparent
trademarks, the moral complexity in his work. There are scenes that seem
intended to present Collins ambiguously – leaving it up to each member of the
audience to decide whether certain actions are justified or not. But these
scenes are given short shrift and are only noticeable if you look for them and
the rest of the film mainly contradicts them by either making it clear that
Collins has no choice or guiding the argument with a simplistic representation
of what is at stake. It both makes a saint of Collins and loses sight of him.
The film is hence neither rousing or moving nor informative or interesting. It
succeeds in being only bland.
Forgive Braveheart its falsehoods and it is a
great film made in the old style – not to be taken seriously and a little
hokey, but something to be swept up in and enjoyed – the kind of underdog story
that Hollywood has forgotten to make since America now makes war with the
underdogs. Michael Collins, meanwhile, forgiving its falsehoods, is far
from emotionally engaging. Neither is it interesting in its complexity or in
its storytelling. It is a grey, cold, dull film that is both contrived for the
sake of entertainment and wholly lacking in entertainment.
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