AS an Irish person, you can't avoid being emotionally involved in the events of the last 25 years. This is my response to what has happened," says director Thaddeus O'Sullivan of his new film, Nothing Personal, which takes place over 24 hours in Belfast in the mid 1970s.
James Frain plays the leader of a loyalist squad ordered to restrain its activities while a ceasefire is being negotiated with the IRA. Over the course of one night, the internal tensions within the gang explode into violence and, ultimately, death.
As the first feature film to be set among loyalist rather than republican paramilitaries, Nothing Personal could find itself open to the same kind of criticism directed at productions like Cal and The Crying Game of over simplifying or decontextualising the causes of political violence in Northern Ireland for the sake of dramatic effect, but O'Sullivan insists that this is not the case.
"This is a simple story, but it's not simplistic. Its prime concern is with the innocent victims of the conflict, and with the effect of the violence on the children." A parallel plot line follows a young Catholic girl (Jenifer Courtney) as she searches for her father (John Lynch), stranded on the wrong side of the sectarian dividing line in the middle of the night.
Adapted by Belfast born writer Daniel Mornin from his own novel, All Our Fault, Nothing Personal recreates the largely vanished world of 1970s Belfast in a claustrophobically small set of locations in Dublin, mostly around Ringsend. "There's a lot of material in Danny's original novel about the connections between the various elements the paramilitaries, the politicians and the security forces. Obviously, there isn't the space for all that within the narrative of a 90 minute feature film, where the focus is on a much smaller group of people, and the impact of the situation upon them."
Nothing Personal has already come under attack in the UK from the Evening Standard's film critic Alexander Walker, who criticised Michael D. Higgins for supporting an "anti Protestant" film at a seminar on Ireland's production, incentives at the National Film Theatre (Nothing Personal was co financed by the Irish Film Board, Section 35 and Channel 4).
Some hours after our interview watch O'Sullivan being grilled on UTV's current affairs programme, Counterpoint. The programme exemplifies the difficulties faced by film makers seeking to explore "Troubles stories", with a hostile panel criticising the accuracy and motives of the film, suggesting that such stories should not even be made. It's the kind of problem which is always going to arise with this material (and O'Sullivan deserves credit for facing these criticisms head on in Belfast, unlike many of those who have made films on the subject).
"Danny is from east Belfast and certainly some of the people he grew up with ended up becoming involved with these organisations. He left in the early 1970s but he understands the context from which loyalist paramilitarism emerged.
"People like James Frain's character in the film see themselves as defenders of their communities acting in a military way. That's the way they like to think of it, but the reality is far more chaotic three guys driving around the streets drunk in the middle of the night, looking for Catholics to kill."
Surely, though, the purpose of those killings is not completely chaotic, but part of a concerted policy of intimidation? "Yes, that's true, but there are also the absurd military pretensions of tin pot leaders like the one played by Michael Gambon in the film." Gambon plays the senior loyalist trying to negotiate the ceasefire and keep his forces reined in.
THE film's screening at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last January drew an enthusiastic response from audiences, and O'Sullivan now finds himself in demand for meetings with American producers. I think what the Americans appreciate about the film is that it examines the emotional and individual consequences of violence."
Nothing Personal is certainly a radical departure in style and subject matter from O'Sullivan's last film, December Bride, a beautiful but austere version of Sam Hanna Bell's novel set in a 19th century Protestant farming community in Co Down. "Yes, this is far more direct. With December Bride, the audience can choose whether to engage with the meaning of the film, but here I take them on a journey.
Since December Bride, he has directed television drama for the BBC and Channel 4, as well as commercials (the current ads for Ballygowan and Eircell are among his work). I certainly find that making commercials has improved my level of craft. It gives you the chance to experiment and to explore the possibilities of the medium." In the closing credits of Nothing Personal, there is an acknowledgement to The Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's classic 1965 study of urban guerrilla warfare during the Algerian revolution. "I felt I should put it in there because some elements of the film, particularly the opening sequence (the explosion of a no warning bomb in a Protestant pub), owe so much to that film. Mind you, we then had to take the credit off again for the film's premiere at the Venice Film Festival, because Pontecorvo is the festival director and it might have been perceived as special pleading"
The brilliant young English actor Ian Hart, who plays Ginger, the gang's most sadistic and uncontrollable member, was voted Best Supporting Actor at Venice for his performance. "In directing a part like that, I think you have to let the actor find their own way to it. Ginger is the kind of character who is very direct very sure about what he's doing.
As a cinematographer and director since the mid 1970s, Dublin born, London based O'Sullivan has been intimately involved in the tortuous history of independent film production in Ireland over the last two decades. I'd like to hope that the younger directors whose work we're now beginning to see here will have the opportunity to develop a body of work and a cinematic language for themselves over the next few years something which we haven't managed to achieve yet."
