By Sophie Esposito
Between comedy and drama, small and big story, Kenneth Branagh does in Belfast the largely autobiographical learning account of growing up in a working-class Protestant family rocked by Catholic-Protestant strife.
After his adaptations of Shakespeare or Agatha Christie, Kenneth Branagh realizes with Belfast a very personal film. He recounts, through the eyes of the 9-year-old boy he was in 1969, the dilemma encountered by his parents, inhabitants of a mixed neighborhood suddenly prey to the throwing of cobblestones and bristling with barricades: should he stay or leave this city divided by the violent conflicts between Catholic and Protestant communities?
On the melancholy music of Van Morrison, sublimated by an ultra polished black and white, this childhood in Northern Ireland is well idealized (perfect family, historical-political subject left in the background). Admittedly, Brannagh brings a tender, sensitive, sincere, sometimes mischievous gaze on his people… But we regret his flat, artificial, overly aestheticized vision of this period of trouble.
Belfast by Kenneth Branagh, indoors (1h38).