Calvary director John Michael McDonagh has stirred up a bit of a storm in the Irish film industry, by saying most Irish films aren’t very good. Of course it’s perfectly timed around the home release of the movie. Besides the obvious publicity shenanigans, does he have a point?
In an interview with the Associated Press, McDonagh said “I’m not a fan of Irish movies, I don’t find them to be that technically accomplished and I don’t find them that intelligent. So I’m trying to get away from the description of the movie as an Irish film in a way.’ The director went on to say ‘It’s not an Irish film. It’s just set in Ireland with lots of Irish characters,’ he said.
For me, that’s a point I totally agree on, but before I get to that, it’s a bit rich for him to criticise the industry of not being that technically accomplished, as Calvary is far from a crowing technical achievement and the same can be said for The Guard. Movies that used a limited number of sets and locations. Hardly requiring numerous rigs and an army of burly men to do all kinds of wizardry on set. Movies like Gravity are technical achievements. Not Calvary or The Guard. But I digress.
Back to my core point and indeed, I believe it’s McDonagh’s core point too, whilst articulated with little consideration, it’s still highly relevant.
“It’s not an Irish film. It’s just set in Ireland with lots of Irish characters” For years the Irish film industry has always hung it’s hat on the“It’s an Irish film” thing. It’s hard to pinpoint when all this hat hanging started, but over the last 20 or 30 years, it’s seeped into the ether. And it’s a huge problem. Why does the industry constantly feel the need to shout about something being an Irish movie? We don’t hear about “American movies with American actors”. We hear and read about MOVIES. It doesn’t matter where they were made. If it looks good, sounds good and provides some form of entertainment for two hours, then that’s all that matters. Is it not?
Thankfully over the last few years, we’ve been getting a steady stream of quality Irish films, which has bucked the trend. Regardless of whether or not they had a full compliment of Irish staff and regardless of where in Ireland they were set, they were decent movies, that just happened to be set in Ireland. Movies like Grabbers and much of Lenny Abrahamson’s work including Garage and What Richard Did are prime examples of the whole “It’s just set in Ireland with lots of Irish characters” thing. Movies like this and similar ones, don’t hang their hat on being Irish, they hang their hat on just being damn good movies.
