Filmed on location: Favorite Irish movies

Leading up to our trip, James and I have watched a lot of movies that have Ireland as a backdrop or characters who are Irish. Some of these movies focus on historical events or time periods; others are just funny comedies.

DVD cover of the Matchmaker.

I’ve always been a big movie buff so when I got back from Ireland, I spent some time watching movies set there. I’ve kept my eye out for Irish films ever since. I shared some of my favorites with James in the last year and we watched the new film “71” together just a few weeks ago.

Here is a list of some of the films we’ve watched leading up to our trip:

“71” – The film follows a young British soldier who is left behind during a riot in Belfast. He must escape IRA men and find his way back to the British barracks.

“Bloody Sunday” – This 2002 film by Director Paul Greengrass looks at an historical event on Jan 30, 1972, when Irish civil rights advocates planned what was meant to be a peaceful protest that turned into a violent massacre when they clashed with British troops.

“In the Name of the Father” – This is one of the first Daniel Day-Lewis movies I ever watched and it made me look forward to seeing him in more movies. This film is again set in Northern Ireland/Britain during the turbulent 1970s. Based on a true story, it follows the imprisonment of four Irish citizens for a bombing in British pub.

“Waking Ned Devine” – This is the first Irish film I watched after I returned from Ireland in 1998. It is about a group of Irish people in a remote part of the island who discover a recently-deceased neighbor has a ticket with winning lotto numbers. They scheme to claim the prize. It’s a funny movie and shows some beautiful scenery.

“The Crying Game” – This movie by Director/Screenwriter Neil Jordan initially starts out to be a story about IRA members kidnapping a British soldier in order to negotiate the release of one of their own. Stephen Rea is excellent as the kidnapper who befriends his captor. There is a twist at the end that most people who’ve heard of the film already know about.

“Ondine” – This is another film by Neil Jordan about an Irish fisherman who discovers a woman in the sea during one of his excursions. His young daughter thinks the woman is a Selkie of Irish lore.

“Intermission” – I discovered this movie on Netflix and watched it because Cillian Murphy was in it. It has an ensemble cast of characters, though its not clear how they connect until the end of the movie. It’s has a bit of dark humor in it, but is funny.

“The Matchmaker” – This movie is set both in Boston and Ireland. An American, played b Janeane Garofalo, is sent to the West coast of Ireland in search of her politician boss’ Irish ancestry as he courts the Irish-American vote. She arrives in Ireland during a match-making festival and funny things ensue.

“The Nephew” – This movie also mixes American and Irish culture as a half-black, half-Irish teenager raised in the U. S. is sent to live in Ireland with an uncle he’s never met after his mother dies.

“The Guard” – This is the first Irish film James and I saw together, before we had any solid plans to go to Ireland. Brendan Gleeson is great in it as a Irish officer investigating crimes in his village.

“The Secret of Kells” – This animated film tells a tale of how the Book of Kells came to be with a mix of a little history and a little mythology.

I’ve seen a lot more Irish films and I’m hoping to share a few more with James, but these are some of our favorites so far. Wikipedia has a much longer list for those who want to see other films.

An island full of accents

James and I watched the movie “’71” the other day. The film is set in Northern Ireland during the period leading up to the violence known as Bloody Sunday. One of the first things I did when we started watching the movie was put the captions on to make it easier to understand the accents.

James laughed at me and asked how I would put the “captions” on when we get to Ireland in a few weeks. I told him there would probably be a lot of requests for people to repeat themselves. When I went to Ireland as a student, I expected the Irish people I met to have an accent that was different than mine. I did not expect them to have accents different from each other. I found the Dublin accent the easiest to understand, but there was quite a range of differences depending on where people were raised.

I had the hardest time understanding a friend when he tried to tell me the name of his home town. Eventually, I had him write it down and it turned out he had been saying Athlone. My ability to understand accents is also a little hindered by the slight hearing loss I have that makes it hard for me to hear some sounds.

Ireland is such a small country, I didn’t expect there to be as much diversity in dialects as there is in the United States, where people from California sound very different from those in Texas or Maine or Michigan. I’m looking forward to hearing accents from around the island on our trip even if I might have a little trouble understanding some of them.