‘Belfast’ is a heartfelt drama about a family (and their city)

Posted on November 19, 2021

By MARK VIOLA

Before COVID-19, I would visit movie theaters between 80-90 times a year on average, sometimes more, hitting 100 in 2019. Obviously, not all of those films were big-budget blockbusters. Instead, many were smaller, quieter movies.

Since returning to theaters on a semi-regular basis, I’ve usually seen larger, louder movies that make the most of the theater’s surround-sound system and massive screen. That’s because I had become more selective in what I went to go see in light of COVID.

However, now that cases have fallen significantly — at least in Florida — it is time to spread my movie-going wings. Although Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch” won’t be mistaken for a summer blockbuster, I went to see it because he is one of my favorite directors.

As such, my first smaller, quieter film in theaters since the March 2020 shutdown is “Belfast,” a semi-autobiographical film from writer/director Kenneth Branagh, who is probably best known for “Thor” and “Murder on the Orient Express,” but cut his teeth in the 1990s and early 2000s filming Shakespeare adaptations.

“Belfast” tells a purposefully small and contained story about a single family living in the tumultuous late 1960s in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is beset by sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants. What makes “Belfast” great is Branagh’s ability to comment on an entire city and time while never losing focus on the characters at its core.

Subscribe to our e-Edition and read the rest of the story. Already a subscriber? Click here to sign in.