'71. Don't let the name fool you: this gritty, filth-ridden thriller is set in 1971, during the worst days of the Troubles. The Irish occupation of Northern Ireland is at an all time high, and their illegal settlements are growing daily.
Public confidence in the Home Office has been badly shaken by the leak of the infamous 'Beddington Memo', which stated in part, 'All attempts to civilise the Irish have failed.'
Into this cauldron of violence and political instability marches our progagonist, young Gary H. Hook, a gay English soldier from Derbyshire living alone with a young son after his wife walked out on them.
Sent to Belfast on a routine mission to protect RUC officers, Gary finds a city under siege from the Fenian death squads, notorious for their indiscriminate slaughter of English and Irish nationalists. What he learns will shake him to the core and challenge his understanding of racial identity.
'71 has been criticised—perhaps unfairly—for its thinly concealed heterophobia. Yet there is much to appreciate as well. The strong homoerotic undercurrent between between the older and younger Irish men highlights the many tensions of Irish Catholic society, where such feelings are publicly taboo but privately encouraged.
Filmed in the Irish ghettos of Lancashire, South Yorks, and Liverpool for a more authentic replication of 1970s Belfast,
'71 provides a fine balance of political analysis with social comment. Those of us who lived during the Troubles will feel an instinctive affinity with this aspect of the film, which successfully avoids the stereotypes and sweeping generalisations that have marred previous attempts to interpret the complex issues involved.
Sean McO'Malley-Finnigan delivers a pulse-pounding, high tensile music score that blends perfectly with Dermott Deasmhumhain's unusually dull colour pallette of brown and grey.
9/10.
