Word: irelanders
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Nice, no. Soulfully conflicted, surely. Neeson grew up Catholic in a small, rural hamlet in Northern Ireland. As a teenager he was torn between a passion for boxing and a love of theater. The world of Chekhov won out in the early '70s, when Neeson joined Belfast's repertory Lyric Players and then graduated to the renowned Abbey Theater in Dublin. There he first tackled drama that dealt with his country's fractious history--in his words, "a lot of Sean O'Casey." (The apolitical Neeson, however, still knew almost nothing about Collins when he came to the role...
Like those other great military geniuses of 20th century revolution--Trotsky, Zapata, Guevara--Ireland's Michael Collins comes to a mean, messy and untimely end, a victim of assassination and, in a larger sense, the victim of his own romantic reputation. But unlike these men, with whom he was completely comparable in the cunning and charisma that are invaluable in rallying the armies of the night in wars of liberation, he has remained a stubbornly obscure figure...
Even in his native land he is more shadowy myth figure than living historical presence. Maybe that's because he died when he was only 31 years old, his work and personality still unfinished, therefore not fully knowable or easily summarizable. Maybe it's because Ireland, despite its bloody history, is a conservative country, uncomfortable in its debt to a founding father whose greatest gift was for violence. And maybe all that is about to change. For Michael Collins the enigma is now Michael Collins the movie--a $30 million epic by writer-director Neil Jordan, auteur previously...
...some very obvious ways, Jordan has told this story well (the film is keenly anticipated in Ireland, where it will enjoy a Jurassic Park-style wide release; the distributor, Warner Bros., is understandably more skittish about its reception in Britain). Jordan's reconstruction of revolutionary Dublin is visually impressive and historically persuasive. His take on Collins is, in its way, equally attractive, if somewhat less than fully dimensional. Collins is presented as revolutionary warriors generally are by their admirers: as a practical soldier, a man of rough humor, mostly inarticulate idealism and, perhaps, a certain unspoken regret about that "talent...
What's true of the overall narrative is also true of the way its major figures have been conceived. There are times when one can't help feeling that the history most pointedly informing Michael Collins is not that of tragic Ireland but of lightsome Hollywood, making sure that past and principles don't weigh too heavily on a biopic's audience. You can see this in the bantering palship of Collins and his faithful sidekick Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn), and in the largely antic rivalry that develops between them over the affections of pert Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts...