Lenny Abrahamson's new film has a tragic origin: the killing of Brian Murphy outside Club Anabel in 2001. But it concentrates less on violence and more on privilege and the pressures of teenage life in modern Dublin, writes
TARA BRADY
'WE'VE HAD reports back about parents and kids going home from screenings and having conversations that they've never had before," says Jack Reynor, the 20-year-old star of What Richard Did.
The jolting new film, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, is an adaptation of Bad Day in Blackrock, Kevin Power's fictionalised account of the death of Brian Murphy outside the Burlington Hotel in 2001. The film concentrates less on the killing of a young man, and more on the life of adolescents in modern Dublin.
None of the actors can remember the death of Murphy, nor the subsequent trial. Any similarities with the Murphy case, they insist, have been minimised by the lengthy preparation time. "It's 99 per cent original material," says Reynor. "All the characters are original."
Reynor has re-joined fellow cast members Sam Keeley, Róisín Murphy and Gavin Drea to tease out the film's unusually complex evolution. "We sat down for eight months prior to shooting to workshop in a very informal way," says Reynor.
"We all became really tight mates really fast. That allowed Malcolm [ Campbell, the writer on the film] and Lenny to use that time to hang out with us and listen to how we talked and to incorporate details from our own lives into the script."
Murphy, the daughter of actor Charlotte Bradley and the one-time child star of The Clinic, insists this was unlike any project she's ever worked on before: "Usually when you're playing young characters they're in the background as a sister or a daughter. They're supporting roles. But we were really absorbed and involved in the making of this."
Armed with cues from the cast's mannerisms and biographies, Abrahamson and screenwriter Campbell's film unfolds as a series of languid, summer teenage hook-ups.
In the film, Reynor's Richard Karlsen is the beloved captain of the school rugby team: a "super-rich" kid with a car, free access to the family beach house, and plenty of bros to hang out with. He seems to have his pick with girls, too, but unwisely becomes besotted with Lara (Róisín Murphy), the main squeeze of mutual friend, Conor (Sam Keeley).
Richard flashes his smile, woos Lara and soon becomes irritated by her continuing relationship with Conor, leading, finally, to an altercation. "We've never really seen Irish middle-class people like this before," says Gavin Drea. "We've never seen them as a varied group of people. They're always caricatures." "They're Fade Street," adds Keeley.
On paper, it's hardly the most sympathetic or heroic part but in a film composed of cool, level-headed meditations on teen life in Ireland, Richard is more than a scheming rich kid.
"If you live in Dublin and go to certain schools you can't avoid people like Richard," says Drea, who plays Richard's best friend, Stephen. "You probably shouldn't feel sorry for him but you do. I think that is what's special about Lenny's films. It doesn't matter if you're Adam and Paul [ the eponymous heroin addicts from Abrahamson's 2004 film] or Richard, the films are about how people cope."
Sure enough, Abrahamson's film sidelines its pivotal act of violence to focus on how golden boy Richard responds in a crisis. His actions are rarely commendable but they are understandable within his own distempered context.
"I went to primary school in Wicklow so I had a different perspective when I went to secondary in Dublin," says Reynor. "What I saw were these guys who are built up and raised to be the elite. They're supposed to be future politicians and doctors and lawyers. They play rugby. They're expected to perform at full capacity all the time. It winds them to a point where it's really easy for them to break."
Sam Keeley, who grew up in Tullamore, Co Offaly, admits he was entirely unfamiliar with the archetype and shocked by some of the material that emerged during the extensive workshopping period.
"It was completely alien to me," he says. "There was no code at the school I went to. The kind of clubbing together that's part of rugby culture just isn't there. I couldn't believe it when the lads started sharing their experiences and stories. For me it was, wow, this runs deep."
Abrahamson and Campbell's methodology has produced a film with many talking points. There's a prescience, notes Murphy, in presenting "an issue that needs to be addressed by the country as a whole - when are we going to stop rich people getting away with so much?".
However, What Richard Did's painstaking recreation of the rhythms and anxieties of adolescent life in Ireland is just as likely to provoke debate about our treatment and mistreatment of school-aged teens.
"Nobody should have to live with the ridiculous system that Irish kids live with," says Reynor. "I know people who come home to: 'You got 97 per cent. What happened to the other 3?' At the end of six years we tell people that 'this is all you're worth'. And I don't think the education system in Ireland sees the worth in anyone who doesn't want to be either a doctor, lawyer, engineer or accountant."
Gavin Drea concurs: "There's all this pressure on 16-, 17-, 18-year-olds to do well or else. My sister just did her Leaving and some of her friends were crying their eyes out over their results. You make teenagers go through years of this and then they have one big blow out and that's all people remember."
The annual tabloid frenzy around merry, post-result adolescents is, note the crew, typical of a country that stigmatises teenagers. "That voyeuristic thing the media do of hanging around looking for drunk teenagers on results night is disgusting and it's a misrepresentation," says Reynor.
Will the film provide an antidote to our toxic notions about teens? The signs are hopeful. It has gone down very well at the premiere in Toronto and in the US, says Reynor. "I worry if it's going to be as well received here. The universal themes are there. But they're close to the bone."
What Richard Did opens this weekend. Tomorrow's edition of The Ticket features an interview with director Lenny Abrahamson and a review of the film
