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| Liam Neeson is outstanding as Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins |
It opens with the 1916 Easter Uprising, an ignominious
failure which the British managed to turn into a glorious one by executing
rather than imprisoning its leadership. It’s one of many misjudgements in our
occupation. It also the impetus for the young Michael Collins (Liam Neeson) to realise
that playing by conventional military roles simply means defeat for the Irish
time and again. Put simply, the IRA needs to stop trying to be a field army and
instead become a guerrilla army, launching targeted hit-and-run terrorist
attacks on the British. It’s a hugely successful campaign – despite the doubts
of Sinn Fein leader Eamon de Valera (Alan Rickman), who favours more
conventional conflict (“They call us murderers!” he cries, with some
justification). But after the British agree a Treaty that divides Ireland, the
IRA splinters into pro- and anti Treaty factions. Can Collins put the cork back
in the bottle of violence, before the country tears itself apart?
Of course, anyone with a passing knowledge of history knows
that he can’t. Hanging over the entire film is the knowledge that Collins’ new
methods of political assassination, plainclothes soldiers, bombs and bullets in
the middle of the night will eventually expand into the indiscriminate bombing
and shooting that consumed Ireland for decades. Not that Collins will live to
see it, as he was assassinated aged 31 attempting to negotiate an end to Civil
War. What makes Collins such an engaging and intriguing figure is that he (or at
least the version we see in this film) was a man forced into methods he knew
were wrong, to achieve an end he knew was right.
Neeson is superb as the charismatic, blunt yet poetic Collins who is noble enough to know that training young men to quickly and efficiently commit murder is an ignoble legacy. Jordan’s film doesn’t condone Collins use of violence, but establishes why it was necessary. Playing by more conventional rules simply wasn’t going to work – and Ireland didn’t see why they had to wait for British politics to shift. Unlike, say Gandhi in India (and Michael Collins makes a dark companion piece with Attenborough’s Gandhi, two charismatic campaigners choosing radically different paths to independence), Collins believed Britain had to be forced to see holding Ireland wasn’t worth the blood sacrifice and emotional cost. (Jordan’s film is also clear that Britain’s hands were equally dirty, the British conducting their own counter-campaign of assassination and violence).
The tragedy that Jordan finds in all of this is that, when
the British were gone, Ireland had become so used to dealing with political problems
with violence that they couldn’t imagine solving their disagreements with anything
else. Collins is in fact too successful: and the film demonstrates that
in radicalising his followers, he’s unable to gearshift them towards compromise.
His attempts to get Sinn Fein to accept a Treaty that offers a workable
compromise (as opposed to an unwinnable full-scale war), leads to him becoming
a victim of exactly the sort of insurgency he pioneered in the first place. To Jordan
he is a man trapped in a world of his own making, unable to remove the gun from
Irish politics.
Michael Collins makes some compromises with history –
something that was bound to get it attacked when dealing with events of such
earth-shattering controversy – but it always feel spiritually accurate.
The British Black and Tans really were as brutal as they seem, and while they
didn’t use an armoured car on the pitch at the “Bloody Sunday” massacre at
Croke Park, they did shoot indiscriminately at the crowd and fire at the
stadium from an armoured car outside causing 14 fatalities (including two
children) and 80 serious injuries. Similarly, in the aftermath of Collin’s
assassination of most of the British intelligence operation in Dublin, three
IRA leaders were “killed while trying to escape” (even if these were different
men than the one who suffers this fate in the film). Just as IRA killings in
the street were swift and brutal, so interrogations in Dublin Castle could
stretch way beyond what the Geneva Convention would suggest was acceptable.
Much of the first half of the film is structured in the
style of an old-fashioned gangster film, with hits and street gangs. Plucky IRA
under-dogs (and Neeson’s Collins is so charming, you immediately root for him),
take-on the more hissable baddies in British intelligence (led first by a
bullying Sean McGinley and then a suavely ruthless Charles Dance). But the
romance slowly drains out of this as lifeless bodies hit the floor – and Jordan
always gives the focus to the dead after they fall, regardless of their ‘side’.
The film has an infectious momentum, which makes its final acts, with their air
of tragedy, even more sad and moving. It’s all also quite beautifully shot by
Chris Menges, the film bathed in some of the most luscious blues you’ll see.
While Michael Collins is more sympathetic to the Irish
(as you would expect), it clearly shows the psychological damage of killing. Hesitant
shooters become increasingly ruthless at the cost of their humanity. Collins
spends a ‘dark night of the soul’ openly confessing that he hates what he is
making young men do and knows it is morally wrong. In the end this explains why
methods were chosen, but doesn’t praise them – just as it doesn’t outright condemn
them, considering what the Irish were up against. It’s a difficult balance, but
very well walked.
There are flaws. Excellent as Liam Neeson (at the time 15
years older than Collins was when he died) and Aidan Quinn as his number two
Harry Boland are, the film’s insertion of a love triangle between them and
Collin’s eventual fiancée Kitty Kiernan often descends into weaker
“Hollywoodese”. It’s not helped by having Kitty played by an egregious Julia
Roberts, who struggles gamely with the Irish accent, and who never transcends
her star status.
Additionally, while the film has an excellent performance by Alan Rickman (in a pitch perfect vocal and physical impersonation) as Eamon de Valera, it also repositions de Valera as an antagonist. Although de Valera certainly was a prima donna who associated his interests and Ireland’s as being one and the same, the film implies that de Valera’s actions are motivated as much by jealousy as principle and lays most of the blame for the civil war on him. Not to mention implying de Valera’s complicity in Collins eventual death (a heavily disputed assertion, strongly denied by de Valera).
Michael Collins though is a thoughtful, complex and
engaging film that brings a tumultuous period of history successfully to life.
Jordan’s film manages to wrestle an enthusiastic admiration for Collins, with a
questioning exploration of how his actions (however well motivated) led to a legacy
of violence. But it doesn’t lose sight of how Collins was aware he was using
wicked methods for a noble aim, or that his goal was to bring peace.
Wonderfully acted by a great cast (every Irish actor alive seems to be in it),
with Neeson sensational, it’s an essential watch for anyone interested in this
period of history.
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