With an outstanding cast (an excellent Judi Dench isn't even in the film's top five performances), Belfast is an uplifting and well-crafted film about echoic memories, childhood fantasy and loss of innocence, relatable to anyone who ever left home or grew up with an outside toilet. The deft mixing of this scene keeps the chaos cohesive, helping the audience access both the narrative and Buddy's confusion without the need for explicit explanation.
The slow-motion sounds of the rioters start to meld with an expansive undulating low tone, fading down into Buddy's breath before anarchic violence bursts out from all sides, raining rocks overhead. We soon realise something is amiss as the camera tracks around a bewildered Buddy and the noise of the train gradually evolves into something else. Despite the complexity and movement of the encompassing dialogue, every syllable is clear as Buddy heads home before he clocks a sound that seems familiar - a train. The opening 10 minutes begin with colour shots of modern-day Belfast before plunging into black and white as a hectic summer afternoon of neighbours and children buzzing around the street, all with something to say, plays out. The general absence of music means that when it is used, it has all the impact of a massive great needle drop, providing many of the film's most joyful moments. Voices are frequently moving off centre while helicopters pepper the skies overhead, creating a soundscape that matches the story in being both epic and narrow. There's always a sense of something going on just out of shot that filters into Buddy's consciousness through his ears. This opens up space for the filmmakers to be freer with featured sound effects and dialogue, using Dolby Atmos to weave them together, forming a stylised soundtrack that bubbles around Buddy. The Oscar-nominated sound team, which includes Gravity re-recording mixer Niv Adiri, aren't always literal with their soundscape, giving the audience subtle hints that what we are hearing is being interpreted through the ears of a child pitching down the voice of a police officer to appear scarier or using a historically inaccurate American freight train horn that Buddy would have heard in one of his beloved Westerns.īelfast doesn't have a traditional score, instead relying mostly on songs and elements from nine tracks by Van Morrison, a Belfast native.
The Troubles sit on the periphery narratively and sonically, occasionally lurching into focus before being displaced by some more pleasant and sensory recollection. Instead, it is uncynically seen from Buddy’s impressionable perspective, and his primary focus is achieving high enough test scores to sit next to the girl he fancies in class, even if her family is Catholic. For the first time, brutality registers in Buddy's otherwise idyllic childhood and before long, a barricade is built at the end of his street as residents are coerced into committing acts of violence against their Catholic neighbours.ĭespite those around him becoming increasingly embroiled and endangered as the unrest persists, life for Buddy goes on, with trips to the cinema and school projects, until the pressure upon his mother to keep the family together while his father works away in England becomes too much and they must decide whether to stay or go.īased on the 50-year-old recollections of director Kenneth Branagh, who lived in Belfast until the age of 10, Belfast does not offer deep insight into the history of the Troubles. In August 1969, strained social unrest in Belfast ruptured into sectarian riots that would result in the largest forced mass movement of people since the Second World War. But for 9-year-old Buddy, it's the dog days of summer, and outside, he and his friends play knights and dragons until called home for tea.
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