Posted: 11/17/2002

Bloody Sunday

(2002)

by Joe Steiff

The now infamous day in January of 1972 when an attempt at a peaceful Irish rally turned into a bloodbath…

Though they can’t seem to get around a peace table, the UK and Ireland were able to jointly produce this assault on the senses based on the events of January 30, 1972. Shot in a “you are there” documentary style (shaky handheld camera, bad sound and all), the film is chaos, structured in blackouts that make one think of a series of gritty b&w newspaper photos seen in chronological sequence. In any other review, the above statements would imply the film is a disaster. To say them about this film is to express the film’s effectiveness.

Paul Greengrass writes and directs Bloody Sunday as a summary of approximately 12 hours in the history of the town of Derry, specifically the day of a Civil Rights march that explodes into violence, not so much by the demonstrators as by an overzealous military force sent to keep the event from becoming violent. James Nesbitt as the march’s organizer and primary proponent does a fine job of shifting from over-worked to shell-shocked, though the tiny digressions into his romantic life seem superfluous.

Bloody Sunday ultimately does little to explain the events or contextualize them. The film throws you in the middle of it all and works best if you already know something about the troubles in Northern Ireland. To see the day’s events as a microcosm of the larger problem of which you’ll gain an understanding as you watch the film is damn near impossible. Thus, this isn’t really a history lesson as much as a document of one event, definitely biased — which is not to say it isn’t factual — towards the Irish perspective of events rather than the British “official story.” As such, ironies abound, and the film reminds me in some ways of Black Hawk Down in terms of a military action gone wrong. Except rather than being construed to make the soldiers heroes despite their misguided intentions and mishandling of the situation, Bloody Sunday clearly embraces the tragedy it depicts in non-heroic terms.

There are sympathetic characters and villains on both sides of the day’s conflict. Lack of effective communication seems to be one of the main reasons for the unfolding disaster. Lack of remorse one of the main reasons the day has gone down in infamy.

Because of the way the story is presented, the US release of this film is probably of most interest to the Irish Americans. No matter how many times others may have listened to the U2 song, most non-Irish will recognize the tragedy of the situation without fully understanding the day’s significance in a larger history.

As a film, Bloody Sunday is a daring exploration of style for narrative, though one wonders how much of its style is dictated by budget. Alternating between the march organizer, a young marcher, several soldiers, the British military command center, the march and subsequent rally, the events unfold in a stop-and-start method that cannot contain their tragedy, separating each moment as if any could have been the turning point, the moment when this event could have been avoided. The film jerks towards an inevitable outcome, shocking and unbelievable to the citizens of Derry much like the shootings at Kent State shocked many Americans in 1970. The effect of this editing, sound and camera style is an immediacy to the events seldom felt when watching a narrative film. If we’re not able to fully contextualize those events, the onus is on us, not the film.

Joe Steiff spent some time in Derry a few years ago, and though the check points were finally gone, he noted that the shadow of January 30, 1972, still cast a long shadow over the town.

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