TITANIC TOWN (Shooting Gallery) Starring: Julie Walters, Ciaran Hinds, Nuala O'Neill, Ciaran McMenamin, James Loughran, Barry Loughran, Elizabeth Donaghy. Screenplay: Anne Devlin, based on the novel by Mary Costello. Producers: George Faber and Charles Patterson. Director: Roger Michell. MPAA Rating: Unrated (could be R for profanity, violence and adult themes) Running Time: 101 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In a scene early in TITANIC TOWN -- a drama set in Belfast during the early days of the Troubles circa 1972 -- British soldiers go on a house-to-house raid of a neighborhood called Andersonstown. One of the raided residences is that of Bernie (Julie Walters) and Aidan McPhelimy (Ciaran Hinds), quiet and non-political parents of four children. While neighbors rage in the street at the soldiers' actions, Bernie's response to the impending invasion of her home expresses concern of a different kind. She frets that the army will find the beds unmade; when they search under her daughter's bed, she laments to the child, "Ah, the dust!"
It's a small bit of business, only one of many in the film, but it shows how interested director Roger Michell and screenwriter Anne Devlin (working from Mary Costello's autobiographical novel) are with establishing character. Over the course of the film, Bernie becomes a bona fide political celebrity, though not a much-beloved one. Incensed over a friend's death at the hands of an IRA sniper, Bernie dares to criticize the IRA's tactics. She joins a peace movement, and finds her criticism drawing the ire of IRA sympathizers in the form of vandalism and threats. Nevertheless she perseveres in an effort to collect signatures for a petition calling for a change in IRA tactics. What's extraordinary about Bernie is that she's so un-extraordinary. She's simply a house-proud mother concerned more with keeping her kids alive than making a statement. At her core, she's a woman who likes the beds made, and with no dust under them.
This simple focus on a simple but very determined woman helps TITANIC TOWN avoid the most common pitfall of films set against a political struggle: It never stops to lecture about the futility of war or to make any other grandiose statement about the events that form its backdrop. Walters delivers a witty, thoroughly engaging performance as Bernie, who stumbles into a position as spokesperson by sheer accident. She's convincing both in Bernie's political innocence -- reading a list of IRA demands to a British official with no clue as to how implausible they are -- and her gradual embrace of the spotlight. TITANIC TOWN paints a picture of a world where life can't be separated from politics, and where one person's odd brand of heroism is born of sheer necessity.
Bernie is such a solid center of the film that its sub-plots often feel fairly thin by comparison. There's unrealized potential in Aidan's character, an ulcer-ridden man whose resentment of his infirmity bubbles over into resentment of his wife's very public actions. There's also a romantic angle involving Bernie's 16-year-old daughter Annie (nicely played by newcomer Nuala O'Neill) that doesn't always feel connected to the story as a whole, despite the framing structure of the story as Annie's reminiscence of her mother's fame. TITANIC TOWN draws its strength from Bernie's incongruous involvement in matters previously beyond her comprehension. Nothing else in the film is ever quite as compelling.
That one story is still compelling enough to keep TITANIC TOWN moving briskly, and to offer a vivid insight into the chaos of 1970s Belfast. Ultimately, despite its milieu of wide-scale violence and strife, it's a film that works thanks to its small moments: avid reader Annie looking out at the war in the streets with a gasp of, "Agincourt!"; a woman dropped suddenly in her tracks by a stray bullet; Bernie deducing the location of the IRA meeting spot through keen recollection of interior design. Films about Big Issues need those small moments to keep them human. TITANIC TOWN is never the monolith its title might suggest. Tragedy sometimes appears in a form less like a sinking ship than like an unmade bed.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 female Troubles: 7.
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