Nobody Knows the Troubles He’s Seen

There is something, perhaps a sense of allegiance or even onus, that compels Irish filmmakers to make films about what is known simply as “The Troubles.”

Jim Sheridan told the story of the wrongly accused Guildford Four in 1993’s “In the Name of the Father.” Neil Jordan used the guerrilla maneuverings of the Irish Republican Army as a backdrop for 1992’s “The Crying Game,” and then depicted an earlier bit of Irish history with last year’s “Michael Collins.”

Wednesday will see the release of “Nothing Personal” from Dublin-born director Thaddeus O’Sullivan, but unlike those other films, and certainly unlike such American action fare as the current “The Devil’s Own,” O’Sullivan’s film does not focus on the IRA. The film portrays one of the illegal and equally violent Protestant paramilitary groups.

The film, a tense character play set in a Protestant section of Belfast in the mid-1970s, is about a pair of boyhood friends--a Protestant and a Catholic, played by James Frain and John Lynch, respectively--who meet 20 years later under horrible circumstances. It is a stark contrast to O’Sullivan’s acclaimed first film, 1994’s “December Bride.”

On a recent visit to Los Angeles, O’Sullivan, 49, is relaxed and amiable yet speaks passionately about both his work and the politics of his homeland.

“The republicans [those in favor of a united Irish republic] against the English is the way it’s always [portrayed]. The Protestant people are kind of overlooked. I wanted to, in the first 15 minutes, say, ‘This is a Protestant, this is a Catholic, this is the guy that plants the bomb, this is the guy that suffers from it. This is the guy who wants to defend his community and that’s all you need to know.’

“Now it’s about turf and inherited ideologies and that kind of culture of violence. And that, consequently, it doesn’t even matter what the ideology is. I don’t care whether it’s a provo [provisional IRA member] or loyalist [to the crown] because the effect is the same--people in the cross-fire are the ones who suffer. The community gets corroded, and the next generation picks up the pieces.”

The group that Frain’s character, Kenny, belongs to is a Protestant paramilitary group and yet the group is never referred to by name. Asked why, or if it matters, O’Sullivan responds, “For my purposes, for my message or story, whatever it is, they’re all the same. Basically, they’re all sectarian killers so it would have been distracting to focus on any one of them.”

He sees parallels between Northern Ireland and the problems in gang-divided U.S. cities. “In the gang culture, it’s similar in that there doesn’t seem to be any alternative except to believe what your peers believe, what your siblings believe, what your neighbors believe. The dominant thought, the dominant ideology, is about turf and demarcation.”

Another similarity to American culture--at least American movie culture--is the image of warring Mafia families. One scene in the film features the two groups--the Protestant paramilitary group and the Catholic IRA, each with their respective political leaders in tow--meeting face to face in an abandoned warehouse to discuss the recent violence and the prospect of a cease-fire. It is a highly stylized scene, reminiscent of an American mob movie. It is not only an ode to American filmmaking, he says, but also his way of showing what he believes is an example of life imitating art. “They are gangsters, they’re into intimidation and graft, and they’re completely corrupt. There’s no tradition of gangsterism in Ireland at that level. So they get it from the movies!”

In the spring of 1995, when the director and actors were researching the film, the Northern Ireland cease-fire, since broken by both sides, was still intact, and the cast and crew moved freely through both Protestant and Catholic areas of Belfast. And yet there still was tension.

“John [Lynch] particularly was very nervous--the others had either southern [Irish] accents or English accents, but John is well-known, especially since he’d been in ‘In the Name of the Father.’ He’s a local boy and everybody knows he’s Catholic and has played a republican or a republican sympathizer. And he was drinking in a Protestant bar. It was incredibly courageous of him.”

The film has already been released in both Ireland and England.

“In Ireland [the reaction] was really good, in Northern Ireland it was terrific, surprisingly. The cinemas in Belfast were really worried about [the prospect of violence] and they wouldn’t show it until one guy who owns a multiplex thought, ‘People have got to see this film, and I’m going to open it, and I don’t care what happens.’ So he led off and everybody followed and nothing [negative] happened.

“In Britain [the film’s run] was pretty bad, I think the distributors made a right mess of it. ‘Nothing Personal’ was one of the first films to be released--well, about to be released--before ‘Michael Collins’ and ‘Some Mother’s Son,’ and the cease-fire was broken by a bombing. . . . By the time it actually got released in October, the cinemas had lost interest.”

O’Sullivan was raised Catholic but no longer considers himself a member of any organized religion. He has lived in London for 20 years and is married with one child. Although he has made his living making award-winning films for both British and Irish television, he looks forward to making more features. But “Nothing Personal” will likely be his last about the Irish conflict.

“The only story I wanted to tell was one about being at the front line. And what it’s like for the people who are not committed to these ideologies and how it affects them--the innocent victims of any war. There was no other story that I wanted to tell.”