What’s it
about?
This movie tells us a lot about the law –
unfortunately it exposes elements of the English justice system that some
lawyers would rather ignore, and the better of us would seek to reform. Of
course this movie is a "docudrama", where the events depicted are claimed
to be authentic, but often owe more to the Hollywood imagination than
reality. In this case the events are reasonably contemporary, and there
have been numerous factual accounts written about the events in the movie,
so the producers had plenty of real evidence to draw on.
Gerry Conlan and three other young Irishmen were
apparently set up to take a fall after an English pub in Guilford was
bombed in 1974, killing five, a crime for which the four young Irishmen
were blamed as alleged IRA terrorists, hence their usual description as
the "Guilford Four". In short order they were tried, convicted, and
sentenced to life imprisonment. It is what happened behind the scenes that
creates the tension and believability of this story.
How did the four young men find themselves behind
bars? There seem to be two basic explanations: the British police needed
an arrest, because of political pressure and a determination to close the
file, and the young men weren’t the brightest in their class. And let’s
not discount the confessions extracted by the most physical means – it is
all in the published biography of Gerry Conlan, and it is from his point
of view that this story is told.
In the movie Conlan is right out of his depth as an
Irish visitor to London, living in a squat with a disreputable bunch of
hippies who prove to be his undoing. It’s hard not to feel sorry for
Conlan, who stumbles from one disaster to another on his way to being
sacrificed by the legal system and Thatcher’s domestic policies. In a
terrifying scene, Gerry and his father Giuseppe are dragged from their
Belfast beds in the middle of the night, Gerry fingered because he had the
bad luck to commit an unrelated crime in Guilford at the time of the
bombing.
The particular villain here is a British detective,
Inspector Dixon, who knows the truth but proceeds to railroad the Irishmen
as IRA terrorists. From that moment we pray for his
comeuppance.
Conlan ends up sharing a prison cell with his father,
who is a man of considerable honour and a candidate for sainthood (can
anyone be that patient and enlightened at the hands of such an
injustice?). Of course it is the father who spiritually saves the son, and
the son who must find the father within himself to survive the prison hell
following Guiseppe’s death.
After years of trying to convince anyone and everyone
that they are innocent, the Four are saved by the cavalry in the guise of
a headstrong and obstinate lawyer, Gareth Peirce. This is where the
audience is encouraged to say a prayer of thanks to lawyers, after all it
was lawyers who put the Four in jail in the first place! She spends years
on her crusade, but there is a frightening aspect to this rescue – she
would not have saved them except for a stupid clerical error that exposed
the police conspiracy to convict the Irishmen.
This happens an incredible 15 years after the men have
been jailed – the point is well made that they have lived the best years
of their lives in a prison not of their own making.
The pluses
It answers a question that could so easily be asked by
an unsuspecting member of the public – why would anyone confess to a crime
they didn’t commit? Let us tell you, if we were locked in a room for seven
days with Inspector Dixon (the evil copper) we’d be prepared to confess to
the Great Train Robbery!
There is a convincing sense of unreality about this
movie – one minute Conlan is a bit of a lad, not someone you’d want your
daughter to bring home, but far from a vicious murderer. Suddenly he is
behind bars and subject to emotional and physical brutality. We find
ourselves asking the same question as Conlan – how the hell did this
happen? Where did his life go?
The prison scenes, in fact the bulk of the movie, are
handled well. It is impossible not to feel compassion for Conlan’s
father.
Daniel Day-Lewis – now here is an actor who can
totally capture your attention, and make vast character changes entirely
believable.
The
minuses
It’s a bit painful to see Conlan act so foolishly so
much of the time, and it’s hard not to cringe. You have to wonder why he
doesn’t do more to make a better fist of his defence, even given the level
of intimidation by the police.
The apparent reality of the script is not helped when
you know (as we do) that Conlan never in fact shared a prison cell with
his father, and the evil Dixon is a composite of a number of corrupt
officers responsible for the conviction. Oh well, that’s Hollywood! This
doesn’t mean we should ignore the events as they are portrayed, but it is
a pity these departures from the truth are there to throw doubt on the
important ideas about the nature of justice.
The movie just goes on too long, especially the middle
section in prison.
The legal
point
Conlan and his cronies would never have found
themselves in their sorry situation if the police had adhered to the rules
of the game with regard to interviews and confessions. You can watch a
movie like this and believe the police act in this manner all the time –
of course, there were laws in place in England that related to terrorist
crimes and the activities of the IRA, that bypassed the normal rules of
interviews and allowed the police leeway they did not normally
have.
In Australia there are strict rules the police have to
follow – not so much because of the law, but because a confession or
admissions obtained improperly will not get very far in court. Remember,
the vast majority of criminal convictions get up because the person
confessed. If that confession doesn’t hold up in court, the police will
lose the conviction and look very silly indeed. So, in general, police try
hard to conduct interviews in ways that have become accepted as fair over
the years.
For instance, usually a person doesn’t have to answer
questions at the police station of they don’t want to. This isn’t quite as
straightforward as it seems, because often suspects will be poor judges of
when to keep their mouths shut. But as a principle, the fact that you say
nothing or choose not to answer questions about an alleged crime cannot be
used against you in court.
Of course, the police are very good at getting answers
out of people when they might prefer to be silent -–this is where there
are other safeguards that come into play. For instance, the High Court has
decided that a person is entitled to have a lawyer with them when
interviewed by the police, or talk to a lawyer on the phone, and that the
police have to wait while you try to get one. And if a lawyer is not
allowed access to a client, the lawyer can make a complaint to one of the
departments located within Australian police forces.
Sometimes police will say things like "it would go
easier on you if you just confessed". The High Court has also decided that
confessions obtained by these sorts of threats (or saying you will be in
more trouble if you do not confess) are also illegal. Sometimes a judge
will allow these types of confessions if there is a compelling reason that
promotes the public interest, but in general the police are careful not to
say things that will get them into trouble in court.
In "In The Name Of The Father" Conlan and his friends
are locked up for a week before they confess. In most Australian States a
person has to be brought before a magistrate, judge, or another person who
can consider the question of bail. So you cannot (in general) just lock
someone away until they confess!
Who put it
together?
This is the creative reunion of Jim Sheridan
and Daniel Day Lewis, the director/actor team of the wonderful "My Left
Foot" (check it out for Lewis’s acting alone).
Jim Sheridan was nominated for an Academy Award for
Best director for this movie. He previously won the same award for "My
Left Foot", which really made his name. He was already a recognised
playwright in Dublin when he came to film, and followed "My Left Foot"
with the underrated "The Field" in 1990. He seems almost unique in that he
has not been seduced to work in America, preferring Britain and his Irish
homeland. Sheridan also co-wrote the screenplay for "In The Name Of The
Father", for which he also received an Academy Award
nomination.
Who’s
who?
Daniel Day-Lewis is Gerry Conlan. Born in 1958,
Lewis first came to attention as the Pakistani in "My Beautiful
Laundrette", and the silly fiancée Cecil Vyse in "A Room With A View". So
great was the breadth in these two roles, it was hard to realise it was
the same actor! Next was "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", another
riveting performance, but the best was yet to come.
Lewis won an Oscar for his portrayal of Christy Brown,
the quadriplegic artist, in the 1989 "My Left Foot", also directed by Jim
Sheridan. He returned to the stage in London in "Hamlet" before diverging
(again!) into the role of Hawkeye in "The Last Of The Mohicans". He worked
with another great director, Martin Scorcese, before playing the part of
Gerry Conlan.
Peter Postlethwaite is the father in the title.
Born in 1945, he became well known in another role as a father, a brutal
portrayal far from this role, in "Distant Voices, Still Lives". By the
time that part came along in 1988 he was already an accomplished stage
actor, in part as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In Australia he was first noticed as the butcher in
the peculiarly English comedy "A Private Function", and he first shared a
screen with Lewis in "The Last of the Mohicans".
Emma Thompson is the lawyer Gareth
Peirce. Like
so many actors from Britain and Australia, Thompson got her start in
university review (Cambridge, no less). She came to notice in the films
directed by her then husband, the celebrated actor/director Kenneth
Branagh – check out "Dead Again" for an enjoyable romp. Then came the
continuing partnership with producer/writers Merchant/Ivory, in films like
"Howard’s End" and "The Remains of the Day", both with Anthony
Hopkins.
She is not only a winner of an Academy Award as Best
Actress, but has received the same honour for her screenplay for "Sense
and Sensibility".
The
performances
Probably the best advice for an actor sharing a space
with Daniel Day-Lewis would be to simply get out of his way! He
dominates this film, no doubt as he is meant to, perhaps with the
exception of his scenes with Postlethwaite. Lewis knows how to become the
character he plays – he is Conlan from the first moment we see him in a
demonstration.
Lewis does brilliantly what he always does best,
showing how a man changes in the face of overwhelming circumstances. Lewis
was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for this
role.
Pete Postlethwaite is wonderful as the father,
and is much of the source of the anger Conlan and the audience feel
towards the corrupt police and government. This of course is the origin of
the title of the movie, and it is in the interplay between Lewis and
Postlethwaite that the movie reaches its occasionally lofty
heights.
Despite Lewis’s overt acting, it is the quiet
magnificence of Postlethwaite’s performance that establishes the emotional
validity of the story. In the end it is his father’s name that Lewis
invokes as the real hero of their campaign for justice. Postlethwaite was
deservedly nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for
this role.
Emma Thompson has an unfortunately small role,
although it is pivotal in the outcome of the story. Thompson is a fine
actress, as her resume clearly shows, but she doesn’t have much to do in
this role. Her great moment, confronting the immoral Inspector Dixon face
to face in court, is little more than the final battle in a lengthy war.
We didn’t quite understand why she was nominated for an Academy Award for
Best Supporting Actress for this role.
Our
verdict
There is a salutary lesson here, embodied in one scene
where the savior lawyer surprisingly finds herself in possession of the
vital piece of evidence that will allow her clients to be freed. Good, you
say, everything turned out okay in the end. But that end depended on an
amazing piece of luck, not legal expertise or a judge’s decision based on
reasonable doubt. In other words, if not for a clerical mistake, the
Guilford Four would presumably still be in prison! It makes you
think.
Still, although the plot depends on the injustice that
is foisted on Conlan and his fellow Irishmen, the story has more to do
with Conlan’s character than his circumstances – or more particularly, how
he deals with those circumstances. This is what the audience has come to
see, what a person does in the face of a great wrong that is apparently
going to paralyse his spirit. It is how he changes and grows that truly
fascinates us.
If you’ve seen "The Shawshank Redemption" (and if not
you’re missing a great film) you’ll know how compelling these character
issues can be. Conlan emerges from prison a different person – how, we
wonder, would we be in the same situation? And how do we emerge from our
own prisons? This is the sort of movie that can take you to places that
are not entirely obvious by reference to the bare bones of the plot. We
liked the ending – Conlan does not emerge a saintly citizen banging a
tambourine on city corners – he is revolutionary, articulate and well
educated.
It is perhaps in the nature of docudramas that
complicated and subtle issues have to be condensed into accessible two
hour scripts. In this movie this is achieved by an appeal to somewhat
simplistic good guys/bad guys characterisations, when of course the
political questions are anything but straightforward. Nevertheless this is
a compelling and well acted drama that lags a bit in the middle but is
essentially entertaining and enlightening.
From LAW
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