The unstoppable triple disturbance that is Kneecap has made it all the way from west Belfast to the puffer-jacketed indie bazaar at Sundance.
It is safe to say that this is the first time an Irish-language hip-hop movie has played this most prestigious of film festivals. It is just as safe to say the event has never seen anything even vaguely like this profane, spiky immersion in acidic Northern humour. This is the right way for a pop group (let’s call them that) to move to the big screen. It’s not quite The Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night. But it bears comparison with The Monkees’ Head or Slade in Flame.
There is one familiar strand from “Troubles” drama here. Like a thousand well-intended radio plays (I once attempted a parody called You and Your Heroes), Kneecap offers us, yes, love across the barricades.
[ Kneecap in Dublin: It’s not rage that the punk-rap three-piece conjure. It’s joyOpens in new window ]
Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh), the one-third of the republican-inclined crew that is not Móglaí Bap (Naoise Ó Cairealláin) or DJ Próvai (JJ Ó Dochartaigh), hooks up with a Protestant girl played with gravy-ring gusto by Jessica Reynolds. There is, however, nothing hand-wringy about the romance.
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Approaching noisy climax, one shrieks “Northern Ireland!” while the other bellows back “the North of Ireland!” – Irish Times readers will guess who says what. Many viewers in Park City, the Utah ski resort that has hosted Sundance for decades, will have needed footnotes.
Incorporating elements of the band’s own story, Kneecap is mostly concerned with the crew’s rise from hop-hop hobbyists to their current notoriety. (Fulminations from Union-friendly media invite that N-word.)
Kicking up unavoidable reminders of his fictionalised Bobby Sands in Hunger, Michael Fassbender turns up as the missing – declared dead – republican father of the initially aimless Móglaí Bap. What do you call a volunteer who now teaches yoga? Bobby Sandals, of course. We know Da is elsewhere being a hippie. The old ’hood celebrates him as a martyr.
The boys’ lives change when, pulled away from mid-level drug dealing, Mo Chara gets arrested and will answer questions only in Irish. A local teacher is pressed into interpretation duties and, later, talks the boys into converting their verse into rap. He and his properly nostalgic Roland 808 drum machine will provide the beats. Wearing a Tricolour balaclava to protect his identity, he completes the posse as the mysterious DJ Próvai.
Never mind the plot. Written and directed by Rich Peppiatt, a former journalist who created the salty 2014 satire One Rogue Reporter, Kneecap works best as a collage of digs at contemporary Northern/North of Ireland woven in with a touching treatise on why the Irish language matters. There is more thesis and antithesis here than expected. “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom,” we hear early on, but by the close the boys wonder if they still want words to be weapons.
Those who baulk at the hoary “It’s the way it’s taught” explanation for the language’s limited penetration will have mixed feelings about scenes of students being forced to recite paeans to turf cutting, but almost everyone (even Utahans) will find those scenes hilarious.
Fassbender’s character is both a Christ-like icon and a symbol of those who can’t move on, like the isolated Japanese soldiers who continued to fight the second World War for decades. The scene that finds Mo Chara justifying the “Brits out” chant to his girlfriend – it refers to the British security apparatus rather than Protestant neighbours, you see – is maybe a little strained, but it’s nice the team made an effort.
All of which risks making Kneecap sound a great deal more pointy headed than is the case. Shot in much (ahem) orange street light, the film has the momentum of a hopped-up joyride.
Experienced supporting players such as Fassbender and Simone Kirby give the rappers room to stretch out. Already popular tracks such as Cearta will do wonders for cinema woofers throughout the world. Given the nature of the beast, there is a degree of chaos to the entertainment, but there is also a sincere desire to speak to a generation defined by their parents’ tragedies.
Following the screening, Kneecap secured the first big deal of Sundance, selling to Sony Picture Classics for distribution in, according to Variety, “North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the Middle East”.
That is a real coup. We wish them the best. We do, however, fear overseas reviewers’ attempts to sum up the Troubles in one opening sentence. That always goes well.
