BLACK '47

The '47 refers to the year 1847 when Ireland's potato famine was at its height and the black to the colour of the crop and to the future of most of the country's inhabitants but don't go to "Black '47" expecting a serious, philosophical account of a little talked about period in Irish history. Lance Daly's superb film is a simple revenge 'western' with a very high body count.

Of course, the Famine is a seldom discussed time in Irish history as if it were a kind of national disgrace rather than a national disaster and has been superseded in both literature and cinema by the Easter Rising and the Civil War so for Daly and his writers P.J. Dillon and Pierce Ryan even to tackle the subject at all seems to me to speak volumes, (in some respects the Famine was almost as divisive a period for the Irish people as the later Civil War).

The story is very simple. Martin Feeney has returned home after fighting for the English overseas, (in Afghanistan of all places). Although 'he took the King's shilling', making him already an outcast among his own people, he has deserted and is a wanted man. He returns to an Ireland devastated by famine to find his mother dead and his brother hanged. After his nephew is killed as the family are being evicted from the hovel they call home, he sets out for revenge.

Calling this an 'Irish Western' isn't far off the mark. As Martin goes about his murderous business in some very inhospitable landscapes the ghosts of Ford and Peckinpah are conjured up. Action and not morality is the order of the day. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and the film doesn't delve very deeply into Ireland's relationship with England, while the soldiers sent to hunt him down could be Custer's cavalry and the Irish, the American Indian; an image rather wittily evoked at one point.

Daly has also assembled a terrific cast of fairly major players to enact his tale. As Martin, James Frecheville is a suitably brooding and mostly silent killer. Hugo Weaving is outstanding as a former soldier who fought with Martin in Afghanistan and is now called to track him, along with Freddie Fox's foppish young officer, Barry Keoghan's young private, sympathetic to the Irish cause and Stephen Rea, (brilliant), as the guide who wants to live long enough and see the outcome so he can tell the story, rather like the Hurd Hatfield character is "The Left Handed Gun" while Jim Broadbent gives considerable shadings to his role of the landlord who sees the famine as a godsend in clearing the peasants from his land.

Whether you take the film purely on face value or see it as a fine introduction into Irish history it remains a wholly admirable piece of work and there's no reason why it shouldn't attract a large audience. For me it is one of the best films of 2018.