Kneecap – informing, educating and entertaining (Irish cinemas from Thursday 8 August)

Sitting down to watch a film in a dark cinema with just two and a half hours of poor sleep after an all-night election count could have been a recipe for nodding off. But that wasn’t to be the case.

Kneecap is the fictionalised origin story of the eponymous rap group. I’m no expert on the band members’ actual backstories, but I get the feeling the most outlandish elements of the film may turn out to be the parts with the most truth.

Right from the off, Kneecap establishes that it is packed with energy and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with a lot of fun poked at sacred cows across the ideological spectrum. While the film raises questions about how the Irish language is used, promoted, politicised, celebrated, spoken and enjoyed, it does so with so much humour that the slight preachiness that emerges in the final five or ten minutes can be forgiven.

The republican movement and paramilitaries get the hand taken out of them. Next it’s the turn of the police, with a great performance of a heavy-handed office by Marty Maguire. Having got those out of the way, director/cowriter Rich Peppiatt moves onto jokes about the potato famine, the Brighton bombing, Michael Collins and even Bobby Sands. Towards the end, the Irish language rappers outline how their approach – and patience – differs from language activists and lobby groups.

Naoise has been aware of the politics surrounding the Irish language from childhood. His dad (Michael Fassbender, no stranger to republican roles having played Bobby Sands in Hunger) is a presumed dead IRA man. Liam’s kink for sexual encounters with loyalist women is at odds with his sense of Irish patriotism: his passionate bedroom banter with Georgia (Jessica Reynolds, who turned up that same evening on the Lyric Theatre’s outdoor stage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream!) is probably more X-rated than their sex. (While the tendency to only see women through the lens of being sexual objects is true to the tone of the film, this terribly male gaze is the most troubling aspect of Kneecap as a movie.)

JJ is a teacher by day and DJ/ music-maker by night. He puts beats behind the embryonic lyrics of the younger pair. Soon Móglaí Bap (Naoise), Mo Chara (Liam) and balaclava-disguised DJ Próvaí (JJ) are on stage, in grimy pubs and clubs before a gig in the old Belfast Telegraph building.

Neither Kneecap the film nor the band are politically correct. It would be odd if they were. Rap is edgy and controversial, the musical version of what Ben Elton was at the height of his left-wing satirical comedy career. It’s often to be found speeding over the line of general acceptability and even beyond a particular community’s outlook and ideology. You might not like what’s being said, but you’re challenged to respond to the forthright views and the place that they are spoken from. (Watching Kneecap reminded me of the quality of the messaging and intellect of some the NI hip hop artists – like Young Spencer from the Shankill – who appeared at the Sound of Belfast NI’s Finest Mixtape event back in November.)

While I can predict that there will be much outrage from people who haven’t seen the film when it is released, the most offensive element is probably the casual attitude to drugs. There are a lot of drugs – sold, used, and flushed – and the film takes a very neutral attitude towards them, other than condemning paramilitaries who say they’re against them but profit from their distribution.

The production values are high, with beautifully cinematography and editing. Animated hand-writing and graphics accompany many scenes, adding extra joy and amusement as well as bringing lyrics and verbal descriptions to life. It very naturally flits between English and (subtitled) Irish. There are numerous cameos by familiar local actors. Watch out for the loyalist band wearing orange jumpsuits: hopefully something that will be borrowed for the Belfast County return parade next summer.

Produced by Fine Point Films and Mother Tongues Films, news broke last week that producer Trevor Birney and director Rich Peppiatt will be working together again in the future and have formed a new production company Coup d’état Films.

Full of small ‘p’ politics, Kneecap is funny and anarchic. It refuses to behave or conform. It definitely entertains. Serious topics are treated with levity: but what other film will you see this year that reminds you that intergenerational trauma has become our biology?

Kneecap will be screened in the Queen’s Film Theatre and most other local cinemas from 8 August.

 

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