Irish Film Week at the Kino
VICTORIA KINGHAM on a new film by Irish Director Pat Collins
This afternoon 45 or so people went to the Kino-Teatr in St Leonards to see a major film premiere. If this sounds interesting, it is even more interesting that the cinema is owned and managed by Olga Mamonova who must be one of very few Russians in the UK – or anywhere – to hold postgraduate qualifications in Irish literature. Once a year therefore the Kino holds an Irish film week, and this exceptional adaptation of John McGahern’s critically lauded sixth and final novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun, constituted a powerful start to the event.
The narrative of the film is simple. It’s a year in the life of an Irish neighbourhood in Galway, seen through the eyes of a writer, Joe Ruttledge (played by Barry Ward). His wife Kate Ruttledge (Anna Bederke) is a photographer. They have moved back to his home village to escape the London grind and live more authentically. They are well-regarded by the whole neighbourhood whom we meet, usually singly, on visits in successive seasons. It is 1984: the population is mainly ageing – it’s significant that there is only one (working) child in the entire film, and no domestic pets, just working dogs. The kind of rural farming community that was dwindling then has, forty years later, largely disappeared.
PICTURESQUE PERFECT
The film stands alone as a work of great art, expressed simultaneously in content and in form. The cinematography is by any standards outstanding. The breathtaking shots of Loch Nafooey in Galway surround the characters and indicate the changing seasons. The same goes for the seasonal shots of the grassy lane up to the cottage of the principal characters. The scene takes are, one might say, classically picturesque. But there is a level of self-referentiality, of thematic unity, in both the dialogue and the narrative: while the characters build a summer house, for example (whose construction progresses slowly throughout the year) one of the protagonists, Patrick Ryan (Lalor Roddy), looks through a frame of wooden slats, remarking that most people don’t know that the view is even more beautiful framed than free. It’s a telling moment that may refer to the frame of the summerhouse, the frame that the character holds, the fictional frame constituted by the film itself, the frame that limits and defines the characters, and possibly the Claude Glass, a frame that three hundred years ago was used by British tourists newly viewing their own countryside, when the Picturesque was a fashionable thing among the Regency chattering classes.
More straightforwardly, the acting is fiercely compelling. This is one of the few films that has genuinely caused me to forget that the characters are well-known Irish actors. The effect is more than just the normal suspension of disbelief. They are gloriously portrayed; Irish country people with little money but great wisdom, little ceremony but depth of emotion, simplicity, and universality. I believed in them absolutely. Part of this achievement is down to director Pat Collins’ careful capture of the spirit (though not the whole narrative) of McGahern’s novel. Choosing the minimum of dialogue, he manages to convey the idea that sparsity was an indication of just how well they knew and loved one another: less is more. Gentler than the novel, but faithful to its aim, That They May Face The Rising Sun is unforgettable.
Further details can be found at IMDb, imdb.com/title/tt28143091/, and at the distributors, Breakout Pictures, breakoutpictures.com. That They May Face The Rising Sun is on general release from 1 April.
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