Kenneth Branagh has ventured bravely into contested territory with this deeply personal film, set at the outbreak of the Troubles in the city of his birth. So divisions are inevitable, with those who deplore it as a travesty of political reality ranged against others who recognise their own stories in it, or simply like it for what it is: a portrait of an ordinary childhood upended by extraordinary communal violence.
There’s no pretence here to offer a political overview. Part of the film’s strength is the way it holds the focus at the level of a small boy’s understanding, so the betrayals seem inexplicable, the threat only ever half seen. As long as nine-year-old Buddy (played by Jude Hill) can go to the cinema with his granny to see thrilling new technicolour releases – which cast a romantic glow over his imagination that resists the sombre palette of the film itself – everything is more or less right in his world.
