The Luck of the Irish
Typically, setting off bombs
in crowded places doesn't make you a hero in Hollywood, although it might well
win you a supporting role as a villain. But the rules are different for the
Irish Republican Army, which has been bombing civilian targets in Great Britain
for 25 years. While the movies routinely turn other terrorists into gun fodder
for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, IRA crusaders almost always play the
role of the tragic, troubled, and ultimately noble Good Guy.
Take some
recent cinematic excursions into the Troubles. November's The Jackal
featured Richard Gere as a former IRA sharpshooter--not bomber--let out of
prison to stop a mercenary terrorist, played by Bruce Willis. Gere is a
virtuous hero throughout, so much so that at the film's end, the authorities
blithely grant him his freedom. Similarly, last year's The Devil's Own
gave us Brad Pitt confronting corrupt gangsters and dying a romantic death for
the Ireland he loved. And Neil Jordan's Michael Collins (1996)
sympathetically portrayed Collins and his comrades in the 1918-1921 Irish war
for independence from Britain--a war won in part by Collins' strategy of
bombings and late-night assassinations.
The latest of the free-Ireland films, Jim Sheridan's The
Boxer , features Daniel Day-Lewis as a former IRA member weary of violence
after 14 years in prison. This film is more sophisticated than the others, and
it explicitly condemns violence in a way most IRA films don't. But it, too,
draws careful distinctions between "bad" terrorists, represented by a rogue IRA
agent who tries to murder Day-Lewis, and "good" terrorists, represented by the
IRA leadership, which tries to protect him.
We are talking about
Hollywood, of course, which means that violence--particularly political
violence--must be repudiated in the end. So nearly every IRA film concludes
with the hero's death (as both Michael Collins and The Devil's
Own do). Most also pay lip service to the idea that murder is not the
solution to political problems, generally by making the hero a regretful killer
who wishes he could just put down the gun. Yet all these films are suffused
with a sense of the basic justice of the Irish nationalist cause and, more than
that, of the purity of the motives that drive the IRA. Members are portrayed as
ascetic and hard-nosed, men you can respect even if you don't agree with them.
In another Sheridan-Day-Lewis collaboration, In the Name of the Father
(1993), in which Day-Lewis plays a man framed for an IRA bombing, the one
person in prison who stands for authority and justice is an IRA leader. In
The Jackal , characters refer to Gere's "passion" and "fire," in explicit
contrast to the chill cynicism of Willis, whose only cause is money.
Even when
Irish terrorists do seem indiscriminately violent or crazy, it turns out the
IRA isn't to blame. In Patriot Games (1992), militants try to kill
Harrison Ford and his family; in Blown Away (1994), a lunatic IRA man
sets off bombs all over Boston; and in The Boxer , the rogue agent kills
an old man, beats women, and bombs pubs. Yet in every case, the villains are
not true IRA members but loose cannons who have broken away from the
organization. The IRA doesn't favor random terrorist activity; splinter groups
do.
This is a distortion, of course. Since at least
1970, the IRA has supported plenty of random terrorist activity in its quest to
reunify British-controlled Northern Ireland with independent Ireland. Northern
Ireland was split off from the rest of the country in 1921, as part of the
peace agreement that ended the Irish war for independence (an agreement
negotiated by Michael Collins). For nearly five decades after that, the IRA
existed only as a shadowy fringe group. But the turmoil of the 1960s, during
which a movement for Catholic civil rights led to sectarian violence, brought
the IRA back into the limelight. When British paratroopers gunned down 13 peace
marchers in Derry in 1972, the IRA inaugurated a new campaign of violence.
Since the
Protestant majority in Northern Ireland wants to remain a part of Great
Britain, and since Ireland itself has shown little interest in reunification,
the IRA's prospects for success through political channels have always been
limited. Instead, it has pursued a strategy designed to make the British
presence in Northern Ireland too costly for the British public to endure.
Bombing the Grand Hotel in Brighton, mortaring Heathrow Airport, and setting
off bombs on the London docks were actions meant to remind the British of what
was happening in Belfast. In recent years, the IRA has shown a greater interest
in solutions short of reunification. It obeyed a cease-fire between August 1994
and February 1996 and agreed to another last July. But the organization has
never repudiated the use of terrorism or the targeting of civilians.
So why does Hollywood give the IRA this special treatment?
First, there's the appeal, to Americans, of the Irish--or, at least, of our
idea of Irishness. Americans imagine the striving, suffering Irishwomen and the
hard-drinking, hard-fighting, working-class Irishmen to be the sort of people
who founded, and now form the backbone of, our own country. IRA heroes look and
sound enough like Americans--that is, like white Americans--to make visceral
identification a snap. Aside from race, after all, it's hard to imagine why IRA
members make more sympathetic heroes than members of the African National
Congress. IRA members aren't living in camps in the desert, either. Instead,
they're hiding in familiar-looking homes and running down familiar-looking
streets. And they're speaking a dialect of English that's distinctly similar--a
precursor, in fact--to ours.
The films
also build upon the long history of popular American support for Irish
independence. As far back as the mid-19 th century, the Fenian
movement for Irish independence was funded mainly through American
contributions. Irish-Americans provided crucial financial support for the
1918-1921 war against Britain that created the Free State. (In Michael
Collins , Collins steals his best friend's girlfriend when the friend goes
to America to raise money.) Since 1969, Irish-Americans have been probably even
more fervent in their support for the IRA than have the Irish themselves.
The IRA's tactics also happen to be well suited
to the conventions of Hollywood cinema. Because its campaigns tend to involve
the planning and execution of individual acts rather than all-out warfare, IRA
members look and act more like professional criminals than like
revolutionaries. For plot construction, this is a big plus--something Hollywood
has recognized in pro-IRA films dating back to John Ford's The Informer
(1935) and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). The scenes of planning
terrorist operations in Odd Man Out , The Devil's Own , and
Jordan's The Crying Game (1992) are almost identical to the scenes in
gangster films like The Killing (1956) and The Asphalt Jungle
(1950), where the hoodlums carefully put together their capers. Moviegoers love
the intricacies of a crime, all the more when it's for a good cause.
Finally, the simplistic view
of politics that animates the IRA fits neatly with the conventional narrative
structures that Hollywood adores. Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous
and doesn't make for a compelling thriller. But the black-and-white world of
the true believer does, especially when it's festooned with the trappings of
Irish romanticism. The IRA, you might say, already lives in a Hollywood movie,
with its noble heroes, amoral enemies, and glorious deaths. It's no surprise
that moviemakers figured that out.
