Yes, it is an October night. And the moon is full. And the leaves are indeed falling. I'm driving five miles west from my home to the Kansas City premiere of Michael Collins in a freak October blizzard. The trouble is that most of those leaves were still firmly attached to the trees and in fact were collecting the snow. When the leaves did fall they brought with them twigs, branches, limbs and, of course, power lines. For the first five miles, there was no electricity--no house lights, no street lights, no traffic lights. (The cable's out! There's no tv! The phone's not working! What will we do?) But there looming on the far side of Metcalf Avenue was the Glenwood Theatre, the biggest screen in town, its marquee aflutter with dancing neon.

I was not the only one to brave this storm. There in the lobby the local Noraid chapter has deployed its wares: pamphlets, display posters, the whole realm of literature awaits me. The Noraid folks are serious people, well beyond the frivolity of building floats for the annual St. Patrick's Day parade and supporting the Irish Crystal shop. What will they possibly make of this film, I wonder.

To welcome us is Bill Quinn, president of the local Noraid cell, "the Pat McGeown chapter." We're all very welcome. We're all thrilled Warner Brothers invited us. And there's a drinks special, two for one, at Paddy Quigley's bar right after the screening. (Are there drinks specials after Japanese movies? Wine offers after French films?)

Michael Collins has not done well in America. In its first twelve weeks it earned just under $11 million, which is less than it earned in non-U.S. release during that same period. (The total gross in very early January was $27 million, roughly the cost of production.) It is currently available in fewer than fifty US theatres, probably because Warner Brothers is waiting for Liam Nesson to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actor and Chris Menges to receive one for Best Cinematography. Then the film can be re-released and is likely to do at least as well as it did in these past twelve weeks.

Reading through the American reviews of Michael Collins"makes you wonder if the critics all saw the same film. Not only is there a wide disparity of opinion--ranging from Jeff Simon in the 'Buffalo News' raving about it as "a brilliant film biography" to Stanley Kaufmann in the 'New Republic' calling it "flaccid...a big disappointment"--but what is right or wrong, successful or unsuccessful is up for grabs. The publication's political orientation was inconsequential with the exception of the take-no-prisoners right-wing 'American Spectator' which wrote: "the fighting is just jockeying for power between thugs--De Valera (Alan Rickman) versus Collins (Liam Nesson)...the myth of British perfidy is carefully cultivated." (That subscription goes to my husband's office lest issues vanish mysteriously.) The only consensus praises the actors, especially Liam Nesson, Alan Rickman, and Stephen Rea and is vastly less generous to Lyle Lovett's ex.

As disparate as the American reviews were, they bore little resemblance to those from Ireland and Britain. Whereas Ireland and Britain saw Michael Collins as a Hollywood production, America saw it as a very Irish movie. Irish history, Irish director, Irish actors, Irish locations, Irish politics. QED: Irish movie. The Americans offered little (and, in many instances, no) assessment of the film's historical accuracy. American reviewers and viewers were largely clueless about the parallels between Michael Collins and the current situation in Northern Ireland. Few critics touched on Jordan's treatment of violence--even fewer said much about Michael Collins as a film.

What was said, and said with such regularity that it seems to have come straight from an orchestrated publicity strategy, was two-fold. First, Michael Collins was obscure, so don't feel bad if you've never heard of him. In the 'National Review', Michael Collins was "one of the least known heroes of the Irish liberation movement"; in 'Time' Collins is "a stubbornly obscure figure"; in 'Newsweek', he was "not a familiar name to most Americans." (Neither is James Madison but this isn't the time to lament what Americans don't know about history.) Second, you should still be interested because Collins was the father of modern guerrilla warfare. To the 'New Yorker' Collins " invented the vicious art of urban guerrilla warfare." 'Time' linked him with "great military geniuses of 20th century revolution--Trotsky, Zapata, Guevara." 'Newsweek' had Yitzak Shamir and Mao copying his guerrilla tactics. Stephen Woolley, the film's producer, told the 'Los Angeles Times' that "He was like Robin Hood, Che Guevara, Gandhi, the Scarlet Pimpernel." (Tights! Cape! Bandoleros! Mask! The costuming decisions boggle the mind.)

To a nation reeling from the long-delayed acquaintance with domestic terrorism in the explosions at the World Trade Center and in Oklahoma City (and one fearful that a terrorist bomb or missile may have brought down TWA Flight 800), the "positioning" of Collins as the father of modern urban guerrilla warfare looks like a terrible blunder. So does its "R" (for restricted) rating which limited audiences to over seventeens unless accompanied by a parent. (Believe it or not, this is very often enforced.)

Despite its disappointing American box office, Michael Collins accomplishes no mean task: take six of the most turbulent years in Irish history, construct a narrative coherent and appealing to an audience that may know little of your subject, remain faithful to the outline of history, secure permission, financing, and talent to transform a European capital to appear as it did 80 years ago, condense to 135 minutes of screen time, and do so on what by Hollywood standards is the paltry sum of $27 million. But Neil Jordan has done not just that. He has crafted a compelling and visually stunning film that for generations will shape what Americans know of Irish history circa 1916-22 even if they lack the good fortune to see it on the big screen.

Michael Collins will be judged on what it means to the long-stalled peace process in Northern Ireland as well as to the ledger books at Warner Brothers. Movie goers are likely to measure it against everything from Pretty Woman (Julia Roberts was cuter) to Ryan's Daughter (Ireland looked prettier) and Independence Day (the explosions were better). Historians, politicians, and terrorists have not hesitated to express their opinions. Jordan knew this. Having endured cinematic images of Ireland ranging from Darby O'Gill and the Little People to Blown Away, Jordan must have seen the risks in making Michael Collins as tiny in comparison to what he stood to lose if Hollywood had made the film with the likes of Mickey Rourke or Kevin Costner.

Tragic as the story is, Collins is not simply made a saint. To compare Michael Collins to, say, Abel Gance's Napoleon or Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, let alone Patton, is to see how profoundly Jordan resists the temptation to mythologize Collins. Humility and humor consistently undercut Collins' heroism. Ireland's War of Independence is engineered by a man self-conscious enough to appreciate the irony of fighting a war while wearing a pin-striped suit and riding a bicycle.

Michael Collins doesn't look like other Irish movies. No mere provincial outpost, Dublin is lovingly seen as a modern metropolis of splendid parks and gorgeous urban landscapes. With his cinematographer Chris Menges, Jordan visually does for Dublin what Luigi Visconti did for Venice in Death in Venice or what Woody Allen did for New York City in Manhattan. In unforgettable night scenes, Dublin pulsates with an electric blue light. These glorious images, such as the view of Halfpenny Bridge as Collins bicycles across the Liffey at dawn, are essential to Jordan's film. As another Irishman, Louis B. Sullivan, once put it, "form follows function." Quite deliberately, Jordan avoids the cinematic clichés associated with Ireland. Gone are predictable images of the rugged old sod, of the quaint Irish peasantry, of a materially impoverish but spiritually rich people. In their places stand striking images of Dublin, a revolutionary movement that is as ingenious as it is righteous, and a cluster of decent people whose lives are lost or destroyed fighting for what was rightfully theirs decades if not centuries earlier.

These Irish are not the starving, barefoot peasants of the Famine or a parochial, priest-ridden society but a sophisticated people of wit and style. From Kitty Kiernan's gorgeous costumes and the men's elegant suits, to gracious hotels and panoramic urban landscapes every frame of Michael Collins conveys a sense of the Irish as modern, progressive people.

The film may be faulted for conflating characters or imposing a highly dramatic structure on historical events. It may be criticized for suppressing Collins' notoriety as a womanizer. I heard one critic in Washington, D.C. yammering about Nesson's being too old to play Collins. Some will probably accuse Jordan of overstating the architectural splendor of Dublin.

After the film, back in the lobby of the Glenwood, I'm asking (well, OK, "baiting" is closer to it) the Noraid folks about their take on the film. "Michael Collins," one tells me, "brought the English gun into Irish politics." Drinks special or not, I despair rather than debate. By now it's snowing so furiously that the drive home is like a terrifying video game. East of Metcalf, all the electricity is out and will be out in many neighborhoods for three days. The only light comes from occasional glimpses of the full moon, my headlights, and lightning. The only sounds are those of tree limbs creaking and cracking under the weight of all that snow, the electrical transformers arcing to ground, and thunder.

In our age, history is no longer written by the victors. History is written by the filmmakers. Michael Collins will forever change the American perception of Irish films and perhaps even of Irish history. And only for the better.

FW 27