A day of madness made real in gripping ‘Bloody Sunday’

It was, as a character says, a moment of truth and a moment of shame. It was a savage blow delivered 30 years ago that the Northern Irish city of Derry has yet to put behind it. It caused a national furor so durable the British government was recently forced to reopen its investigation into the event. And it has inspired first a classic song by U2 and now an exceptional film, a compelling, gut-clutching piece of advocacy cinema that carries you along in a torrent of emotion as it explores the awful complications of one terrifying day.

“Bloody Sunday,” which shared the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival, shows the power of real events dramatically conveyed. Made by writer-director Paul Greengrass out of a sense of communal outrage that has not gone away, this film never wavers, never loses its focus or its conviction. It takes us from dawn to dusk on Jan. 30, 1972, a day in which British troops opened fire on unarmed civil rights marchers. Twenty-seven people were hit, at least five shot in the back; 14 died.

Though he’s made some dramatic features, Greengrass is best known for his 10 years of doing documentaries for a top British TV series. Starting from the painstaking book (“Eyewitness Bloody Sunday” by Don Mullan) that led to the reopening of the case and taking Gillo Pontecorvo’s landmark “Battle of Algiers” as a model, Greengrass and his team (production designer John Paul Kelly, editor Clare Douglas and director of photography Ivan Stasburg) have re-created the events of that day with such potency you feel you are there with the marchers, personally experiencing the awful inevitability of history gone terribly wrong.

Cinematographer Stasburg deserves special mention for the way his expressive, jittery hand-held cinema verite camerawork, lurking around corners and eavesdropping on conversations, creates the immediacy of newsreel footage. “Bloody Sunday” plays like it’s the work of a documentary crew with great instincts and total access. It manages the difficult trick of conveying chaos while allowing us to recognize the patterns in the madness. It’s both spontaneous enough to resemble reality captured on the fly and focused enough to be intensely dramatic.

“Bloody Sunday’s” narrative device retains its potency throughout the film: Everything is structured around cutting back and forth between two of Northern Ireland’s perennial antagonists, the beleaguered British Army and the province’s restive Catholic minority.

The Catholics, ironically led by their Protestant member of Parliament Ivan Cooper (an outstanding James Nesbitt), are holding a press conference restating their determination, as believers in peaceful protest in the Martin Luther King tradition, to march the next day for civil rights and against the British practice of internment without trial.

At the same time the British Army, personified by the ultra-confident Maj. Gen. Robert Ford (the impeccable Tim Piggott-Smith), is holding a press conference of its own, reiterating that marches are banned and that people “organizing such events are liable to immediate arrest. Any responsibility for violence must rest on their shoulders.”

Though both sides speak the same King’s English, genuine communication is nonexistent. Fortified by internal logic and vocal supporters, the army and the Catholics are equally sure they are in the right, a situation that led to a fatal end.

“Bloody Sunday” focuses on a quartet of protagonists, two on each side, representing a kind of “Upstairs/Downstairs” look at the day’s events as they unfold. The youngest character is 17-year-old Gerry Donaghy (Declan Duddy, himself the nephew of a 17-year-old who died on that day). A Catholic boy just three weeks out of prison for throwing stones, he needs to stay out of trouble but doesn’t want to miss the excitement The youngest person on the other side is Soldier 027 (Mike Edwards), one of the hated, red beret-wearing British paratroopers who’ve been secretly brought into the city to snatch up the march ringleaders and stamp out stray hooligans. Authentically played by ex-military men, the Paras perfectly convey the feeling of cogs in a military machine whose programmed eagerness to get out and do what they were trained to do proved catastrophic.

The commander of British troops in the city, Brig. Patrick MacLellan (Nicholas Farrell), also feels hamstrung, caught between local leaders who want peace and the obdurate Gen. Ford, determined to teach the Catholics a lesson about exactly who is in charge.

Far from being a hothead, Ivan Cooper, the man in charge on the other side, feels exceptionally responsible for the marchers’ safety. He even convinces his colleagues to change the route so as to lessen the chance of hostilities. “We just want a peaceful march,” he says. “This is our day.”

Yet what happened turned out to be beyond anyone’s control. Emotions on both sides proved impossible to contain, and “Bloody Sunday” conveys to an almost unbearable extent the chaos that resulted.

Though it’s clear where its sympathies lie, the film has been careful not to treat even the British as anything other than fallible individuals operating under hellacious pressures. Once positions hardened, tragedy was all but inevitable, and “Bloody Sunday” does the spirit of that awful day full and unforgettable justice.

*

‘Bloody Sunday’

MPAA rating: R for violence and language. Times guidelines: The realism of the violence is disturbing.

Portman Film presents, in association with Granada, The Film Council and Bord Scannan na hEireann/The Irish Film Board, a Granada Film/Hell’s Kitchen production, released by Paramount Classics. Director Paul Greengrass. Producer Mark Redhead. Executive producers Pippa Cross, Arthur Lappin, Jim Sheridan, Rod Stoneman, Paul Trijbits, Tristan Whalley. Screenplay Paul Greengrass. Cinematographer Ivan Strasburg. Editor Clare Douglas. Costumes Dinah Collin. Music Dominic Muldoon. Production design John Paul Kelly. Art director Padraig O’Neill. Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes. In limited release

James Nesbitt...Ivan Cooper

Tim Pigott-Smith...Maj. Gen. Ford

Nicholas Farrell...Brig. MacLellan

Gerard McSorley...Chief Supt. Lagan

Kathy Kiera Clarke...Frances