I’d not heard of Kneecap. The band from Northern Ireland rap in the Irish language, which makes them unusual and worthy alone of a biopic. The fact that they’re good at it and are also buzzy, funny, lairy lads who can act is just a bonus.
There are only 80,000 native Irish speakers on the whole island of Ireland, an on-screen info dump tells us, and only 6,000 in Northern Ireland, the bit that remains part of the United Kingdom since Ireland broke away a century ago.
So, band members Móglaí Bap (stage name of Naoise Ó Cairealláin), Mo Chara (Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh) and DJ Próvai (JJ Ó Dochartaigh) are a minority within the Catholic minority of Northern Ireland, not that anyone talks much about Catholics and Protestants in director and co-writer Rich Peppiatt’s movie, though the Troubles and their aftermath speckle it like a nasty sore.
For these “ceasefire babies”, the challenge is to forge a new, post-Troubles identity, one that’s culturally rather than politically defined. The Irish language plays a key part – “A country without a language is only half a nation,” as JJ’s activist wife puts it. But as Peppiatt and his co-writing Kneecap accomplices tell it, one of the key problems is that the Irish taught in schools is fossilised – even in the new textbooks men are still taking pigs to market and cutting turf. Nice to see that jokes the Irish humourist Flann O’Brien was making 60 years ago still resonate.
God, I’m making it sound dry. It isn’t. The vibe is Trainspotting – druggy, laddish, fast-moving – taking us from early scenes where an Irish-speaking music teacher (Ó Dochartaigh) is dragged in to the police station to help translate for the police, who have Naoise there on a charge of spraying graffiti in support of the controversial Irish Language Act, designed to give the Irish language equal status with English.
By the end of this funny, gnarly scene, JJ has realised that the perp he’s been translating for has skills, and the “getting the band together” wagon is on its way. Practising in a lock-up. Local resistance from would-be hard men. A gig attended only by a scattering of bemused Guinness-cradling oldsters. Word of mouth buzz. Sudden success. It’s a bit like The Commitments shunted over the border, but with a lot more ketamine. This is very much a ketamine movie.
Michael Fassbender turns up as Naoise’s dad, a wanted man on account of his anti-British activities back in the day. He lends the film a starry support, but it’s on the performances of the three excellent leads that it mostly hangs.
It’s highly likeable, very refreshing and it is playing many genre angles in one swoop – the across-the-divide love story (Mo and Georgia, his Protestant girlfriend, played by Jessica Reynolds as a young straight guy’s hot dream), the dad issues (with Fassbender), the political (run-ins with the partisan police, represented by Josie Walker’s stern Detective Ellis), the linguistic, youth rebellion, drugs. Too much, you might say, or a “here’s my shot I’m going to take it” attempt by Peppiatt and co to get everything in that needs to be got in.
How the “lowlife scum”, as they’re called, became cool and made a splash, by pulling militant Public Enemy poses and rapping in Irish, is a good story well told. And for all the drug references – cocaine and ketamine cocktails seem popular – it’s no more out there, really, than Easy Rider.
And the references to Northern Ireland politics are kept to a minimum. This is a movie you can come to cold and enjoy. And, like I say, the songs are good, the jokes are funny, the guys are worth spending time with and there’s even on-screen subtitling for when they switch into Irish. Now I’ve heard of Kneecap.
Kneecap – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024