Even while understanding that much of Belfast is supposed to be from the perspective of Buddy (Jude Hill), a young boy who witnesses the beginning of Ireland’s “Troubles” in his working-class neighborhood (and serves as something of a stand-in for writer-director Kenneth Branagh), I still felt a type of artistic naivete at work—a belief that all you need is black-and-white cinematography and a cute kid to create something of deep meaning and emotion. Maybe it’s not naivete, but calculation, as Belfast earned accolades from the British BAFTAs, the Oscars, and plenty of others. In any case, when Buddy’s love for the movies he sees at the local theater bleed into his everyday life, so that a confrontation between his neutral father and an anti-Catholic neighbor is framed as a standoff from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it struck me as a moment of icky whimsy. Belfast includes a handful of such scenes, off-kilter attempts at a cinema-inflected magical realism, but even in the more straightforward sequences the camera is usually doing something arty or ostentatious, always for the sake of its own cleverness rather than as part of some carefully considered aesthetic strategy. With Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan as Buddy’s parents, Judi Dench and Ciaran Hinds as his grandparents, and enough Van Morrison songs to qualify as a visual playlist.
(3/11/2022)