Some Mother's Son
Directed by Terry George
Starring Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan
Now screening in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney
Review by Michael Heany
Any visitor to Northern Ireland who keeps at least half an eye open will notice that politics is very much on the street. An easy signpost to whether you are in a Nationalist or Loyalist area are the murals on the walls. A visit to the Twinbrook area of west Belfast will show that the area's most famous son — Bobby Sands — is still honoured for his sacrifices as leader of the 10 Republican hunger strikers in 1981. Murals dedicated to him and the other hunger strikers are sill maintained by the local community.
Some Mother's Son, written by Terry George and Jim Sheridan (of In the Name of the Father fame) and directed by George, brilliantly evokes that cathartic period in Irish politics when, one by one, the 10 hunger strikers died fighting for political status.
The strength of the film is that the events are seen through the eyes of two of the mothers of the hunger strikers, played by Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan. The women are in conflict: Mirren is a pacifist school teacher whose main concern is keeping her family out of politics and harm's way and Flanagan is a farmer from a Republican tradition who supports her son as a soldier in a liberation war.
On the story line George said: "I've tried to tell a story that explores the lives of apparently ordinary women who face an impossible task with courage, wisdom, and amazing inner strength. Helen Mirren and Fionnula Flanagan found those characters for me and breathed more life and humanity into them on the screen than I though possible. Telling the story through the mothers' eyes was a way to explain the larger canvas of the hunger strikes in a universal way."
George also captures the tenacious spirit of the nationalist people of the north-east six counties. Commenting on this and the film, Mirren remembers her experiences there: "The great thing about Northern Ireland people was their huge sense of humour — a fairly black sense of humour. In the midst of all that death and darkness, there is an enormous life force that was never recognised — certainly you never saw it in the reporting coming out of Northern Ireland. So this is not just a story of gloom. It's a story ultimately of the human spirit."