| Overall Grade: |
A- |
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| Story: |
A- |
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| Acting: |
A+ |
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| Direction: |
A+ |
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|
| Visuals: |
A+ |
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A+ visuals, costumes, acting ruined by politics
by ROBERT G (movies profile)
Nov 7, 2007
4
of
5 people found this review helpful
1. it is difficult to imagine a more perfect job of authentic costumes, acting, and cinematogrophy.
2. it is also easy to understand why this fine film will never get wide distribution or achieve any real commercial success in its current format, which can be fixed.
3. being an irish catholic and having grown up listening to relatives who participated in the events portrayed in this film, it is tragic to see those events distorted by someone trying to sell a violence is always bad agenda.
4. sure, none of us likes violence, but ireland would not be free and prosperous today unless some very brave people had engaged in the violence which the director of this film is trying to condemn.
5. the same thing is true of the united states. the policies of the british empire gave ireland and the united states no other choice.
6. this film can be salvaged with some relatively minor reshooting of scenes and adding some newsreal and other material.
7. the execution of one brother by another depicts tragic events that actually took place.
8. however, those events were the result of deliberate planning by the british government to pit the irish against one another, the same tactic they used unsuccessfully in india by setting the muslims and the hindus against one another, resulting in the deaths of millions.
9. fortunately, the irish people caught on to the british stategy very quickly and the number of these tragic events was very small.
10. take out the killing of one brother by another, focus on the members of the british government planning to start a bloodbath in ireland, add material on the economic reforms that the irish followed up with so that a british ruling class was not replaced by an irish ruling class, leaving the irish serf class where they had been for centuries, and you have a true masterpiece that speaks not only of the history of ireland, but to the conflicts going on today in which ruling elites in certain middle easern countries are trying to preserve their privileged positions by directing the anger and frustration of their serf classes against non muslims with absolutely no intent of improving the lot of their serf classes.
11. the ira has always had strange allies, such as michael collins lending money to lenin for the russian revolution and being offered and accepting financial and other assistance from many muslim countries.
12. ireland is a fantastic success story with the problems in the north now effectively resolved and the entire island nation propering both in ireland itself and in the overseas irish outposts to which many of us were driven by the british empire.
13. this film comes so close to being, not only a huge commercial success, but a means of conveying the reasons why other nations now mired in violence can do the same thing that it is worth buying the film and all rights to fix it.
14. it is a fine thing that some of the artists who create fine films like this one can live in an ivory tower world in which all reassonable people solve their problems by just refusing to participate in any violence.
they are able to do do only because brave people are protecting them from the violence of others.
15. however, the world has never been a completely reasonable place and never will be, but we can make it better.
16. this film comes tragically close to delivering a very valuable message to those in the world currently caught up in tsunamis of violence.
17. we will find out from the people who made and own this film whether they are interested in delivering that irish message to the world or whether their self proclaimed artistic and completely impractical principles will condemn this film to an extremely small market delivering no useful message to anyone, but certainly making the british empire, which fortunately no longer exists, look good.
robert thomas patrick gilleran |
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