DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Neil
Jordan
PRODUCER
Stephen Woolley
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Chris Menges
MUSIC
Elliot Goldenthal
EDITORS
J. Patrick Duffner
Tony Lawson
CAST
Liam Neeson (Michael Collins)
Julia Roberts (Kitty Kiernan)
Aidan Quinn (Harry Boland)
Alan Rickman (Eamon De Valera)
Ian Hart (Joe O'Reilly)
Stephen Rea (Ned Broy)
Brendan Gleeson (Liam Tobin)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 133m
U.S. release: October 11, 1996
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Official
website
Other Neil
Jordan films
reviewed on this website:
- The
Butcher Boy
- In
Dreams
- Interview
with the Vampire
|
Critics
are fretting way too much over Michael Collins,
as they frequently do with historical films. Is it an accurate
portrait or a glorification? Will it inflame the renewed Irish
troubles? No use picking nits about Michael Collins; it's
an unabashed romantic epic. The proof is in the casting: hunks
Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn, pretty woman Julia Roberts, and
thinking-woman's heart-throbs Alan Rickman (whose stock has risen
since Sense and Sensibility) and Stephen Rea (The Crying
Game).
Working from his own script, which took years to get produced,
the acclaimed Irish director Neil Jordan uses very broad and
movie-ish strokes to paint his portrait of the busy, eponymous
hero. As played by Neeson, Michael Collins is a Dublin scrapper
with soul -- a terrorist who regrets the need for terrorism.
In 1916, the British have the Irish under their thumbs, and Collins
believes that the only way to escape the oppressors' thumbs is
to hack them off.
We get premonitions of the violent dissent to come when Collins
clashes with Irish Republican Army president Eamon De Valera
(Rickman), a canny and (Jordan suggests) murderously duplicitous
politician. As Collins tires of bloodshed and seeks a peaceful
compromise, De Valera harbors vengeful bloodlust beneath his
dyspeptic demeanor. Michael Collins should be seen for
Rickman's performance alone; his best and spookiest moments are
his most immobile -- he's like a cobra in repose.
That's one of the movie's two conflicts. The other is between
Collins and his best friend, Harry Boland (Quinn), who are both
madly in love with the gentle Kitty Kiernan (Roberts). Sometimes
this love triangle is groanworthy, even if it did actually happen,
and dramatically it leads nowhere. Neeson and Roberts strike
few sparks together, perhaps because they were once an item in
real life years ago.
Jordan isn't good at conventional romance, anyway. He's best
known as a dark fantasist (The Crying Game, Interview
with the Vampire, Mona Lisa, The Company of
Wolves), and Michael Collins gives him some Third
Man-esque intrigue to play with. When Collins meets a spy
(Rea) in various dark places, the atmosphere is as saturnine
and forbidding as you could hope for, and Jordan's cinematographer
Chris Menges works in bottomless shades of blue and gray. (No
green in this Irish movie.) The director also stages violence
-- sudden, jolting -- like a true pacifist.
The performers understand their function, which is to look great
and be larger than life. Roberts' accent falters a bit (as it
did in Mary
Reilly), but she commits herself, as if grateful for
a high-prestige job. Quinn has a fine moment of quiet heartbreak
when Kitty confesses her love for Collins. Neeson comes through
with a full-bodied, full-throated performance, though you'd do
well to forget that Collins was only 31 when he was murdered.
Neeson, who looks his age (44), is playing a man in his twenties
for much of the movie.
Michael Collins is neither a history lesson nor great
art; it lacks the complexity to be either one. What it offers
is Jordan's visual mood, carried on Neeson's wide shoulders.
You either relax into the voluptuous movieness of it or you don't.
I did, happily. |
