Movie Review: Bloody Sunday (+ 2 great documentaries)

In 1972, a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, ended in a confrontation between some protestors and the British Army paratroopers. (Today, oddly enough, is the 34th anniversary of the incident.) The protesters - mostly Catholics, though led by a Protestant MP - were mostly unarmed and if so, were armed with stones. The British Army Companies stationed in Derry had all the guns, and were frustrated enough with past incidents of violence to use these guns at this mostly peaceful march.

Bloody Sunday is quite well-made. We follow a few lead characters around through a 24-hour period, starting Saturday evening and ending on Sunday at around the same time. The Protestant MP who leads the illegal march superbly portrayed by James Nesbitt (who looks so familiar, but I don't know where I've seen him) as a get-things-done guy who's feeling the pressure come D-Day, but whose idealism is never in question even as we see him smoothtalk his way into defusing any number of volatile situations between protesters and the paratroopers. Lots of hand-held camera work infuses the scenes with a sense of immediacy, and we move through the crowds with the crowds, often with our vision as severely limited due to the throngs around us as any of the protesters.

This is no even-handed movie, though: the bad Englishmen are rotten to the last man, the Irish are quite saintly, even the policeman who snitches on the protesters by revealing their plans to the British Army. Even in the face of open fire, the protesters never fire back at the Army because they simply didn't come to the march armed. None of them. Bit hard to believe, that, especially when the movie itself is openly admitting to some very gory incidents in the past. In the end, when the paratroopers are defending themselves by alleging that they were fired at by the marchers or had nailbombs thrown at them, the movie cuts to a scene where one of the wounded men is taken into Army custody and has nailbombs planted on him. I mean, give us a little credit here.

The movie builds up quite well, though, and there's tension in the air as the march begins and progresses and moves towards its conclusion. We see indiscriminate firing. People cry, there is confusion amidst the marchers, everybody's running around trying to find all the dead, trying to find out who they are. The final count is - wait for it - 13 people.

Feeling a little let down by the numbers? If so, you've hit on the biggest problem with this movie. Widely acknowledged as a classic, hailed as a masterpiece of a documentary, Bloody Sunday simply doesn't pack a punch for the average movie-goer these days. Scratch that and amend it to average person. The incident is apparently still a major sticking point for the people of Northern Ireland; they are still outraged about it, they've had the incident officially investigated twice and are still not satisfied with the results. I can understand that, I really can, especially because the paratroopers who perpetrated the massacre were never reprimanded, and some of them were even decorated by the Queen for their services to the Crown. I can see why it rankles the Irish.

But the British, they've done a lot worse than 13 people, haven't they? I'm from the country of the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre - 397 people officially killed, most accounts say over 1000; General Dyer presented with a jewel-studded sword upon his return to England. That's a massacre. How does that old joke go? Definition of a massacre: two Americans, ten Europeans, a hundred Mexicans, a thousand Indians, a million Africans.

But it's not just me and my background. I bet any of you could recite a list of ten deadlier conflics off the top of your head. Inside us all has grown a cynical little heart that refuses to be impressed by paltry numbers. Good for us, I say. No shame in going after the big 'uns, even if it means ignoring the petty thieves.

Now if you're in the mood for a really good documentary, try City of God (Cidade De Deus). It's a Portuguese movie about a kid's life in the slums of Rio. Awesome stuff. And the best part of it is it doesn't try to hit you on the head with its message. There's an insane, unspeakable amount of mindless violence that forms a backdrop to this almost everyday story of one boy who rises out of the slums to fulfil his lifelong passion for photography. It astounded me how detached he was from his surroundings - he accepts it all as a matter of course, there's no question in his mind there's nothing he can do about it so he doesn't waste even thought on it. Even when he unknowingly does something he thinks will put the slum gangs on his case, he freaks out the way you and I would freak out about having misplaced a file or something at the office. It's brilliant.

That's my review then: Bloody Sunday isn't BAD, per se, but ultimately I didn't care about what happened because it wasn't any big deal. There's better documentaries out there, and City of God is a perfect example.

Addendum: I cannot, cannot believe I forgot Z in my list of documentaries worth watching. It's the best one I have ever seen - if you were to watch just one documentary in your life, this should be it. It's about a political killing in Greece, but the movie is in French, because even using the letter 'Z' is banned in Greece (betcha didn't know that) for reasons that are explained in this movie. It's just an astounding piece of work, superbly directed, written and acted. It works immensely well as simply a suspenseful thriller, and to think it's all true blows your mind away. (Unlike Bloody Sunday, this movie is firmly rooted in verifiable fact.) Here's a link to Roger Ebert's review - but, honestly, see this movie for yourselves before you read anything. It's really something.

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