TITANIC TOWN
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Shooting Gallery Director: Roger Mitchell Writer: Mary Costello (Novel), Anne Devlin Cast: Julie Walters, Ciaran Hinds, Nuala O'Neill, James Loughran, Barry Loughran, Elizabeth Donaghy, Ciaran McMenamin, Jaz Pollock, Caolan Byrne, Aingeal Grehan
Every schoolkid used to know that Aristophanes' "Lysistrata" was the theater's first antiwar comedy. To put an end to fighting in various Greek city-states, the women of one community decide to lock their husbands out of their bedrooms until the testosterone-laden creeps lay down their arms for good. The technique worked. Though the history books give contradictory evidence, most men would rather make love than war.
In a similar vein, "Titanic Town," based on an autobiographical novel by Mary Costello and scripted by Anne Devlin, weaves a yarn based on actual events during the 1970s when the Troubles were at a peak in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In this tale, the women do not as a community try to put an end to the endless shootings that are taking place in Andersontown, located in West Belfast. In fact from the looks of at least one particular foul-mouthed citizen, locking the husbands out of the bedrooms might even be considered a blessing by the menfolk. Instead, just one woman takes it upon herself to give peace a chance in her community, and while she does not ultimately succeed, she shows what a single, ordinary, middle-aged and struggling person can do to excite the sentiments of thousands of people including a VIP politician and his staff.
Filmed on a council estate in Enfield, a suburb of North London, and also partly in Belfast, "Titanic Town," features sporadic shootings that sometimes tragically take the lives of innocent civilians. On one side, British troops, originally put there to protect Catholic families as well as Protestants, are often shot at as they patrol the neighborhoods and make frequent arrests of people suspected of being with the Irish Republican Army. For their part, their IRA are guilty of not only shooting down soldiers who are maintaining the domination of Great Britain throughout the counties of Northern Ireland but often accidentally shoot blameless civilians as well.
While some neighbors, led by the fiercely vocal and foul- mouthed Patsy French (Jaz Pollock), are unalterably opposed to the presence of British troops, others, particularly Bernie McPhelimy (Julie Walters), more or less say "a plague on both your houses" and have contempt for both the extremist wing of the IRA and the soldiers who are targets of their bullets. While Bernie's ulcer-ridden husband Aidan (Ciaran Hinds) tries to reign in his newly political wife, their sixteen- year-old daughter Annie (Nuala O'Neill) is enjoying her seventeenth summer: a first love with medical student Dino (Ciaran McMenamin), who later proves to be other than he appears.
Directed by Roger Michell with a light hand to emphasize the humor of an ordinary apolitical citizen's rise to partisan fame as the leader of a woman's peace movement, "Titanic Town" is the sort of film which, if helmed by an Oliver Stone would be brimming with bursts of fire, explosions, and flying bodies. Though Michell positions in his share of firepower to give the audience the feel of extreme tension in an otherwise insipid neighborhood, his focus is on the drama of a mundane woman's 15 minutes of fame as she rallies 25,000 signatures on a petition which she gets to present to the Secretary of State for the province, George Whittington (Oliver Ford Davies). As Whittington, Davies' patronizing attitude toward the energetic Bernie and her co-conspirator, Deirdre (Aingeal Grehan) seems to go unnoticed by the petitioners.
Academy Award nominee Julie Walters ("Educating Rita") does a knockout job as a somewhat flustered housewife who takes on the British army, the I.R.A., and the dissenting members of her own household. Performances are strong across the board.
Not Rated. Running time: 100 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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