AN UNLIKELY PEACE ACTIVIST EMERGES IN BELFAST
The Titanic was built and launched in Belfast, only later to run into an iceberg. The paradigm of a sinking ship with many lost lives due to irresponsible behavior by those at the helm is perhaps one way of understanding the conflict in Northern Ireland over the last few centuries. In 1972, when violence escalated in Belfast, one woman came forth up to try to stop the killing. That woman, according to the film Titanic Town, is Bernie McPhilimy (played by Julie Walters). Directed by Roger Mitchell, the story is based on the autobiographical novel Titanic Town (1998) by Mary Costello, whose mother is the inspiration for the fictional housewife Bernie. When the movie begins, the McPhilimy family moves into a townhouse in well-manicured Andersontown, West Belfast, only to find itself in a war zone. British troops attempt to arrest members of the Irish Republican Army and its sympathizers, with inevitable retaliation, and the violence goes on. Bernie, a Catholic working class mother of four, watches while old men are apprehended and innocent bystanders are shot, and then decides that she must do what she can to have the IRA reschedule its shooting during curfew hours so that ordinary people, especially her four children, can go about their lives in peace. Although she tries to make her point at a meeting organized by Protestant women, the Protestants have a different agenda, and pro-IRA mother Patsy French (played by Jaz Pollock) and her supporters disrupt the meeting. However, Bernie’s views catch the attention of the British media, which is eager to divide the Catholic community so as to erode support for the IRA, and she naïvely plays into their hands. Nevertheless, Bernie wants Belfast’s children to grow up in peace, so she forms an organization, Women for Peace, and collects 25,000 signatures on a petition to ask both sides to stop the violence after lamenting that the day had not yet arrived when the IRA would mourn the death of a British soldier, and British authorities would mourn the death of Irish Catholic civilians. The IRA and British authorities then communicate with each other through her. In the process, however, she infuriates Catholic supporters of the IRA, who harass her and her family, so her crusade endangers the very family that she originally sought to protect. When the film ends, she resigns from Women for Peace and moves out of West Belfast, but her family has learned to support her courage and wisdom. If a film could serve to nominate a fictional character for a Nobel Peace Prize, then Bernie McPhilimy would certainly be packing her bags today for a trip to Oslo. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated the film Titanic Town for an award as an exposé of actual conditions in the civil war and as an eloquent plea for a peaceful resolution. MH
SUBURBAN AMERICA’S PROBLEM IS THAT IT DOES NOT READ DOSTOEVSKY
The theme of angst of suburbia, from Over the Edge (1979) to American Beauty (1999), is replayed with far more raw intensity in Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, directed by Rob Schmidt. Based loosely on the Dostoevsky classic, the film contains many voiceovers from Vincent (played by Vincent Kartheiser), a savvy teenager who for some reason has a crush on fellow schoolmate Roseanne Skolnick (played by Monica Keena). From New York, where he learned an invaluable lesson after a police arrest, Vincent looks down on suburbia in California. The film guides us by scrawling eight titles across the screen: (I) “Learning to Hunt” shows the sexual restlessness of the suburb, where husbands spend too much time at the office and newly built communities lack opportunities for cultural pursuits. (II) “Her Mother’s a Whore” features Roseanne’s mother Maggie (played by Ellen Barkin), who wants a hot bed partner, falls for macho bartender African-American Chris (Jeffrey Wright), and moves out of the beautifully furnished home with her second husband. (III) “Living with Dad” proves to be a nightmare for Roseanne, since her father Fred (played by Michael Ironside) becomes an alcoholic and ultimately rapes her. (IV) “Dark Side of the Moon” demonstrates how Roseanne is unable to come to terms with the incest of her stepfather and rejection by her mother. Her erstwhile boyfriend, star athlete Jimmy (played by James DeBello), cannot understand why she has become so moody. (V) “Damaged Little Fuckers” is the critical segment, in which Roseanne prevails on Jimmy to help her to kill her stepfather. Jimmy holds Fred down while Roseanne inserts a knife into his chest; when Fred fails to succumb immediately, she goes to the kitchen to get an electric carving knife to deliver the fatal blow. When Maggie returns home on an unexplained visit, she discovers the body and incriminates herself by pulling out the knife, thus having her fingerprints on the murder weapon and getting blood on herself. Her 911 call brings police, who arrest her. During the trial Maggie appears certain to be convicted by the suburban jury. (VI) “Guilt Destroys” then traces how Jimmy and Roseanne cope with the situation. Roseanne avoids Jimmy, so that they will not be suspected of the crime, while seeing more of Vincent, whose comforting words appear at first to provide a Faustian rationalization. Jimmy, however, has no support from anyone, since Roseanne will not see him. (VIII) “Surrender,” the final segment, features a confession by Jimmy, followed by another by Roseanne, who is incarcerated for manslaughter. While in prison, she is abandoned by Jimmy but faithfully visited by Vincent, for whom she ultimately falls. However, the sick suburban community continues as before to provide the seedbed for more alienation and violence, learning nothing from the tragedy of the Skolnick family. Originally, the movie was to be called “Crime and Punishment in High School,” but the title changed after the Columbine massacre so that the focus would be on the causes of violence rather than the violence itself. But what can be done to prevent violence amid the material success of America’s suburbs? Two answers emerge. According to the film’s director, religious values need to be affirmed, a point repeatedly made by Vincent in a low-key manner, for which he evidently receives the label “freak” from his schoolmates. A second answer emerges from the movie’s deconstruction of the mindless competitiveness of Chris’s athletic coach (played by Marshall R. Teague) and the pyrotechnic atavism of the pep rally; narcissistic individualism is the obvious source of the poisonous alienation, with the implication that the children of the suburb may grow up and wise up. Roseanne, by implicitly accepting Vincent’s proposal to join him in New York after her release from prison, thus appears headed for a cultural, social, and spiritual redemption, leaving the plastic California suburb behind. New Yorkers will doubtless hope that director Rob Schmidt will provide a prequel or sequel to Crime and Punishment in Suburbia, but the Political Film Society has nominated the movie for an award as best film of 2000 advocating nonviolent and peaceful ways of solving human conflicts. MH