The Background

“ I have never lost so much sleep over the filming of a movie”, Neil Jordan sighed after the completion of Michael Collins. His insomnia was understandable.

The film Michael Collins was to be more than just a film - it was an historical event in itself. Michael Collins’s life is today’s politics, and in transforming fiercely debated history into epic entertainment, toes were inevitably going to trod on.

The background to the film’s screening was almost as emotionally fraught as the aftermath of the Treaty negotiations. The airwaves dripped with vitriol as revisionist historians clashed over the historical accuracy of a film they hadn’t even seen. The Irish film censor controversially lowered the viewing-age of the brutally violent film to 12s, in the name of education. Book shelves creaked under the weight of re-published Collins biographies.
Accusations

The most dangerous accusation was the film’s potential as an apologia for terrorism. The green light had been given to the movie in the euphoric days of the IRA’s first ceasefire and, as Jordan said, “we genuinely felt that, because of the ceasefire, the time had come to make the film and to discuss issues [contained within it].” This was all very well, but the ceasefire has collapsed by the time the film was ready for release and events in Northern Ireland were once again on the precipice of descending into bloody violence.

Finger-pointers also accused the film of being riddled with historical inaccuracies. The scene featuring an armoured car opening fire on Croke Park spectators during Bloody Sunday was dismissed as fantasy; a car bomb being used to kill an arrogant Belfast detective in Dublin Castle, years before the device was actually invented, was labelled an anachronism; and implications in the movie that de Valera had effectively sanctioned the killing of Collins were castigated as “outrageous” by his granddaughter, Sile de Valera.

Jordan countered that movies are about feelings, not facts. The emotions of the time were being resurrected, and the time constraints of a film meant that composite characters had to be formed and events condensed for dramatic effect.

Collins as a subject

The real surprise was that the film had taken so long. It took more than twelve years for Neil Jordan’s script to grow from conception to completion. During the period, others attempted to capture on celluloid Ireland’s greatest untold story. Kevin Costner was even seen in the depths of West Cork practising his lilting accent, yet all the attempts tripped up in the final furlong.

Collins’s story was the perfect subject matter for cinematic treatment. As film producer Kevin McCrory succinctly put it: “James Bond doesn’t rate with Collins”. His short life of 31 years hung around the three pillars of Irish history in the frenzied days of the fight for independence: the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War. There was passion, destiny, danger, deceit and, of course, love as Collins and Harry Boland fought for the affections of Kitty Kiernan.

As a character too, Collins was fascinating material. With an amazing capacity for ruthlessness, he was able to send young men of just eighteen years off on murder missions , yet at the same time was able to display an extraordinary capacity for humanity as he ensured de Valera’s family were always looked after, even when he was at war with him.

Film Merits

After the months of speculation, the film arrived and the publicity was almost suffocating in its intensity. Records for cinema attendance were smashed while critics almost universally lauded Michael Collins as the most remarkable movie to emerge from Ireland. But with the hype and publicity now buried, is the film really any good in the cold, critical light?

There is no doubt Michael Collins is a monumental achievement. The prospect of the complex events of the struggle for independence was tedious for any film maker. What Jordan did was to retell the past in terms of the dynamism of a set of personal relationships: how the events strain and split, and tug and tear them with all the intensity of a Greek tragedy. As Jordan himself said: “What interests me is how people can determine what happens to whole countries; that jealousies, rivalries and insecurities can lead to war.”

Jordan wrote in his notes which accompany the screenplay that “historical reality is both a stimulus and a snare”. Its snare-like qualities came to life in the months preceding the film’s release with accusations of historical inaccuracy. What the accusers failed to appreciate is that Hollywood epics are not historical documentaries, and do not claim to be.

The debates about whether Collins actually proposed to Kitty Kiernan before or after the treaty negotiations, or whether Ned Broy was tortured in Dublin Castle or not, are wholly incidental. Where Michael Collins triumphs is in its ability to recreate the passions and emotions of the period more vividly than any words written in the intervening seventy five years.

However, skewed historical detail is one thing, but re-writing historical understanding is another. The most salient flaw in Michael Collinsis Jordan’s lazy decision to implicate de Valera in the death of Collins, merely for dramatic closure.

All historical knowledge points to the fact that de Valera was in West Cork at the time of the shooting, but was desperately seeking peace. Having lost much credibility from the anti-treaty movement during the Civil War, he was easily overruled by the movement’s military wing. All subsequent actions were beyond his control.

Demerits

Disappointingly, Jordan’s decision adds to the ever growing revisionistic tendency to deify Collins and demonise de Valera.

Dev emerges as a kind of gross caricature with as cardboard a personality as an evil henchman from a James Bond movie. Despite actor Alan Rickman’s laudable attempts to infuse some life into the role, the script constrains any portrayal to that of a dithering, manipulative, despicable leader. It’s hard to understand how, in the context of the times, de Valera could have elicited such fierce loyalty if his personality was congruent to that portrayed in the film.

But as the cinema screen fades, the video gets consigned to the higher shelves, and the movie gets its annual Christmas TV outing, will anyone remember it?

In the US, probably not. It floundered at the crucial US box office, despite widespread critical acclaim. It subsequently failed to win any nominations at the Academy Awards, due perhaps to political reasons and allegations of historical inaccuracy. It will not, therefore, rank alongside the great Hollywood epics. as many critics proclaimed at the outset.

In Ireland? It has been the single most important film in the history of Irish cinema. For all its flaws, Michael Collins is still a great triumph Its release aroused a voracious appetite for knowledge into events of the period, long dormant due to so-called “popular amnesia”. Michael Collins managed to help break the taboo of inspecting the past, and discussion of the events that shaped the nation. At least that is something we can all be thankful for.

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