Nation or nurture? Maeve (1981), BFI Blu-ray out now

 

I felt very strongly that documentary was fiction because the shots were chosen and because of the politics of the person with the camera. Thus, I decided that if Maeve were fictionalised, we would have more scope to tell the truth.

Writer/director Pat Murphy was well ahead of the curve on this issue, as quoted in Dr Emmie McFadden’s excellent booklet essay, Sites of Power – Memory, Storytelling and Identity; what we get is not necessarily what we see and this new BFI release has a wider discussion about the portrayal of Ireland by film makers from without the country in the documentary Irish Cinema – Ourselves Alone? (1996). Murphy is very much from within having grown up in Dublin and Belfast before coming over to study in England and whilst her other films Nora (2000) and Anne Devlin (1984) were based on actual lives, Maeve is based, in part at least, on her own experiences. The film was also the first made entirely on location in Belfast… a mere 84 years after the Lumiere Brothers filmed O’Connell Street down in Dublin.

Maeve is a film that reads like a book; a dialogue-rich mix of naturalism, magic-realism and deliberately challenging set-piece debates about Irish nationalism and the feminist cause. Arguing with her – increasingly ex – boyfriend Liam about the true cause, Maeve tells him that this very masculine history erases her sex, past, present and, very probably, future whilst his response is that feminism is a side show weakening the main priorities of the movement for one state.

Mary Jackson's Maeve arrives home

So it goes and, whilst this debate is still alive, the activists of forty years ago are now themselves outflanked/diluted by agitators with new concerns for social recognition even as buses are still being burned in Northern Ireland. At one point Liam talks enviously of his father’s ability to grow up “inside all that and accepting it…” republican history; an unmovable trajectory for independence that provides its own myths and momentum and its own rewards. He bemoans the fact that at his age his father was already blowing up border posts and that he might be just one of those revolutionaries who don’t want to get shot.

The narrative moves back and forth as Maeve (Mary Jackson) looks back on everything she left behind on her return home from London where she intends to study photography. Such a lifestyle is frivolous to Liam (John Keegan) who is becoming only more entrenched in his views, all the more so as what he considers Maeve’s self-obsession moves her further away from him. But is the whole cause as likely to one day be as obscure as the stone circle Maeve flies over on her way back home? There’s an Englishman next to her who’s going to write an article on megalithic monuments for The Journal of Lost Knowledge…

Brid Brennan's Roisin brings home unwanted attention

We begin with Maeve’s father, Martin Sweeney played by the excellent Mark Mulholland, who you fancy, must have known Ted Hastings as a young man, spinning yarns in a pub by the River Lagan. He writes to Maeve after being told to take to his back room by British soldiers clearing the streets for a bomb nearby.

A lot of actual stories are relayed through the characters – giving real substance to Murphy’s documentary purpose. Maeve sits with her sister Roisin (Brid Brennan excelling in only her second film) who tells her of being stopped by a group of republicans with a boy armed with a gun. Then there is the story of a British soldier who climbed into bed with them – rifle in hand – expecting a warmer welcome than he got. The girls are made to jump up and down by a patrol and generally the view of the army is mixed to say the least.

But there’s little unity even within the Catholic “side” with most people, like Maeve’s parents just wanting to get on with their lives – to compromise. This isn’t enough for Maeve. As Dr McFadden points out, a woman’s duty here is seen as supporting the men in the fight for nationalism and yet her own mother is derided by her Uncle who caused her father to spend a year in jail by hiding explosives in his house without telling him. Martin gets the respect for doing the time and yet his brother has little respect for the wife that held the family together.    

Mary Jackson and John Keegan

A centre. A landmark. Laying a foundation, giving new ground. Grounding ourselves… Clarity. About what happens, about what’s supposed to happen… A lie. The truth. A lie that tells the truth… A projection. A memory… A way of thinking. A way of not thinking.

Younger Maeve recites this free verse as the camera pans over a misty clear Belfast, seen from the hills… all peace and possibility just before she rows with Liam, pining for the freedoms brought by blowing up border posts.

It’s Murphy’s willingness to experiment like this that keeps the film fresh and delivers the unexpected delights and shocks that make it so rewatchable. It’s a very earnest film but that’s a compliment given the subject and our unwillingness to let go of categorisations that lead to binary thought. She’s not didactic and leaves us to take things at face value and make our own minds up – a rare objectivity. A very Irish objectivity.

Mark Mulholland with Nuala McCann as Young Maeve

There are strange and lovely episodes with young Maeve exploring a dry-stone wall as her father, looking straight to camera, retells a story about a calf following him home, as they break from delivering his baked goods to the rural areas where they lived for a while before being forced back to the city and eventually the Falls Road. Then there’s a visit to the Giants Causeway on the Antrim coast, where mother and daughters walk barefoot before encountering an odd man blasting the sea with catholic verse, nature shouted down by nurture.

Writer director Lizzie Borden also writes an essay for the booklet in this set and notes that Maeve has been pushed into the ‘Irish Troubles’ bin, “… important but a partial and patriarchal view of its content” yet re-watching it she was “…stunned by how relevant its feminism is, ahead of its time and exactly of this time”. She also notes the bravery of filming in an actual warzone.

Now is the right time to reappraise this invaluable film and this is another superb set from the BFI.

The booklet includes an interview with Murphy, co-director John Davies and cameraman Robert Smith from March 2021. Davies remains “really pleased with the way the political commentary dipped in and out of the fabric of the film…” and I have to say they got this right as you care for Liam, Martin, Roisin and Maeve. The remains no easy answers.

Also included is a video essay on the film from Chris O’Neill, filmmaker and Head of Cinema at Triskel Arts Centre as well as the Donald Taylor Black and Kevin Rockett's documentary mentioned at the top. Ourselves Alone? separates the reality of domestic productions from the shamrock-tinted spectacles of The Quiet Man and other films which, even though they have merit, don’t really tell the whole story.

If you want that, you can and should order Maeve direct from the BFI online!

 

PS My Dublin uncle, actor and comedian Mike Nolan, was once in a film with Rock Hudson called Captain Lightfoot (1955) playing “Willie the Goat”. It’s a load of Hollywood blarney directed by Douglas Sirk, but at least Mike was the real thing and it was filmed in Ireland! It’s a riot, check it out on blur-ray too or on Amazon Prime.