‘Cal’ breaks new ground as film

Press, 23 October 1984, Page 34

‘Cal’ breaks new ground as film

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ruainuaiuu x jvas London “Cal,” a sombre movie about the agony of Ulster, is bringing home to mainland Britons what it is like to be canght in the crossfire of Northern Ireland’s sectarian savagery. The $5.3 million film, produced by an Englishman and directed by an Irishman, was well received at the Cannes Film Festival, where its only name star, a Shakespearean actress, Helen Mirren, won tbe best actress award. "Cal” is the latest in a string of feature films about Ulster’s 15-year-old "troubles” over the last decade. Most won critical praise but were financial flops because British distributors shunned them as too politically sensitive. A few years ago, London’s National Film Theatre cancelled showing "The Dawn,” a 1936 movie about the 1920 Black and Tan war, because it was considered too provocative for English audiences. When the movie finally got a private showing,

Special Branch agents hovered oatside the theatre noting who went to see it. "Cal,” produced by David Puttnam, who, made the Oscar-winning "Chariots of Fire” and “Local Hero,” breaks new ground because it is playing to a wider audience on a main circuit after a London premiere. It is also doing good business in Dublin and was released in the United States last month. “Cal” gets its Northern Ireland premiere on November 12 at the Queen’s University film festival in Belfast, where the festival administrator, Michael Open, said it was “the most important film we have ever shown.” “Cal” was directed by Pat O’Connor, who has made 12 television documentaries on Ulster. The movie, his first feature, is based on a novel by Bernard MacLaverty, an Ulster Catholic, who wrote the screenplay. The central character is Cal McClusky, a 19-year-old 1 Catholic sucked into the relentless cycle of sectarian violence. He is the driver for an Irish Republican Army gun-

man who kills a Protestant policeman. Cal, ridden by guilt, is unable to break free of the 1.R.A., like many young men in the north. Some wound up with a bullet in the head when they tried to get out. Cal seeks forgiveness from the policeman’s widow, a Catholic named Marcella, played with smouldering restraint by Helen Mirren. , They are helpless victims, trapped by Ireland’s centuries of violence, unable to comprehend anything but their own despair. They become lovers, but the romance is doomed by the events that brought them together and their environment. Cal and his father, Sbamie, are burned out of their home because they are Catholics living in a Protestant area. The boy is beaten by Protestant thugs. His father, who works at a meat-packing plant — a symbol of the sectarian slaughter — is driven to insanity. John Lynch, aged 21, a Catholic from the flashpoint border town of Newry, was

plucked from a London drama school for the role of CaL He makes an impressive screen debut and gives the character flesh and blood. Critics welcomed “Cal” for its insight into the Ulster conflict and its protagonists. Derek Malcolm, film critic of the London “Guardian” newspaper, wrote that “Cal” was “an honourable undertaking explaining how politics affects ordinary people and sometimes destroys their lives with no just cause. “What O’Connor has achieved is a film that stands against the kind of hopeless suffering that leads only to cynicism and despair.” Keith Nurse, of the “Daily Telegraph,” said the film “left me uneasy and uncomfortable. Brave indeed is the film-maker who decides to descend into the snakepit of Northern Ireland’s sectarianism.” Ray Comisky, film critic of the “Irish Times,” said “Cal” should remove resistance to movies about the troubles.