The
Titanic was built and launched in Belfast, only later
to run into an iceberg. The paradigm of a sinking ship
with many lost lives due to irresponsible behavior by
those at the helm is perhaps one way of understanding
the conflict in Northern Ireland over the last few centuries.
In 1972, when violence escalated in Belfast, one woman
came forth up to try to stop the killing. That woman,
according to the film Titanic Town, is Bernie
McPhilimy (played by Julie Walters). Directed by Roger
Mitchell, the story is based on the autobiographical novel
Titanic Town (1998) by Mary Costello, whose
mother is the inspiration for the fictional housewife
Bernie. When the movie begins, the McPhilimy family moves
into a townhouse in well-manicured Andersontown, West
Belfast, only to find itself in a war zone. British troops
attempt to arrest members of the Irish Republican Army
and its sympathizers, with inevitable retaliation, and
the violence goes on. Bernie, a Catholic working class
mother of four, watches while old men are apprehended
and innocent bystanders are shot, and then decides that
she must do what she can to have the IRA reschedule its
shooting during curfew hours so that ordinary people,
especially her four children, can go about their lives
in peace. Although she tries to make her point at a meeting
organized by Protestant women, the Protestants have a
different agenda, and pro-IRA mother Patsy French (played
by Jaz Pollock) and her supporters disrupt the meeting.
However, Bernie’s views catch the attention of the British
media, which is eager to divide the Catholic community
so as to erode support for the IRA, and she naïvely plays
into their hands. Nevertheless, Bernie wants Belfast’s
children to grow up in peace, so she forms an organization,
Women for Peace, and collects 25,000 signatures on a petition
to ask both sides to stop the violence after lamenting
that the day had not yet arrived when the IRA would mourn
the death of a British soldier, and British authorities
would mourn the death of Irish Catholic civilians. The
IRA and British authorities then communicate with each
other through her. In the process, however, she infuriates
Catholic supporters of the IRA, who harass her and her
family, so her crusade endangers the very family that
she originally sought to protect. When the film ends,
she resigns from Women for Peace and moves out of West
Belfast, but her family has learned to support her courage
and wisdom. If a film could serve to nominate a fictional
character for a Nobel Peace Prize, then Bernie McPhilimy
would certainly be packing her bags today for a trip to
Oslo. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated
the film Titanic Town for an award as an
exposé of the actual conditions in the nasty civil war
and as an eloquent plea to resolve disputes peacefully.
MH
I
want to comment on this film
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Titanic Town
by Mary Costello
A
coming-of-age novel set against the sectarian conflict
of Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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