NYFF: '71

'71

99 minutes

Written by Gregory Burke

Directed by Yann Demange

Starring Jack O'Connell, some other people

Jack O'Connell is having a helluva year. Having already received much well-deserved praise for his staggering turn in Starred Up, O'Connell now shows what he can do in a role so underwritten he barely qualifies as a character. Using those deft facial muscles and his piercing eyes, he manages to turn a cipher into a captivating victim of misfortune, taking the lack of material and turning that nothingness into emptiness.

It's 1971 and Ireland is tearing itself apart. The military is called in to pretend they're doing something as citizens become militants and diurnal responsibilities give way to civil destruction. Private Gary (O'Connell) is thrust into the clusterfuck known as Northern Ireland in the wake of Bloody Suday. Protestants and Catholics are blowing each other up and the military wants to project a veneer of helpfulness. It's a no-win situation, but the military has to appear like they matter. When young boys greet them by tossing balloons full of pee, the soldiers respond by laughing, as they wonder aloud about the purportedly unstable situation.

Soon a crowd forms and the angry villagers proliferate. Soldiers, sans riot gear (riot gear might make them look too militant), try to calm the riotous crowd and squelch the brooding hostility, but a young boy snags a rifle from a soldier who's been knocked unconscious by an aerial rock. The boy takes off running, and Gary and his soldier friend (whose name I didn't catch) run after the boy; but the duo are knocked down by the angry mob, the friend gets shot in the face, and Gary is beaten bloody. Soon Gary is alone and lost in what his superiors passively refer to as "a confused situation." 

His character is given virtually no personality (I had to look up his name after the film ended because I couldn't remember it, and it never really mattered much), but O'Connell makes us care about Gary simply because he's so good at doing things with his face. He puts up that stoic visage required for all military types, but there's that subtle hint of something else, something hiding behind those jittering eyes. As the city around him burns and piss-filled balloons give way to rocks and bullets, the stoic facade crumbles and outright fear takes over. We know nothing about Gary, but we care about him--that's how good Jack O'Connell is in an empty role.

There's some stuff about his younger brother/son (I might have missed that detail, or else it was left ambiguous), and we do see Gary having a tender moment with the boy. This early scene leads to perhaps the only moment of genuine human warmth in the film, but it's so fleeting a moment that the constant barrage of action quickly terminates any residual emotion the scene might have engendered.

Writing for The Dissolve earlier this year, David Ehrlich called Gareth Edwards' Godzilla the first "post-human" action film. '71 arguably falls into this new non-genre, as writer Gregory Burke and director Yann Demange (making his debut at the helm of a feature film) jettison the creation of any sympathetic characters, and choose to forgo personalities all together. They rely on Jack O'Connell's dexterous face and director of photography Scott Kevan's uneasy camerawork to sustain tension. It works: the camera wavers and shakes an awful lot, but it never feels out of control or lazy; Demange immerses us in the smoldering ruins and dark of Ireland circa 1972. The air is thick with chalky remains of obliterated buildings and bodies and the echoes of bombs. Demange is also ineffably aided by some sharp, smart editing, which keeps things from getting too chaotic. The sound editing is particularly keen and deep, with bullets whizzing through the air, missing their target, becoming embedded in the still-standing brick walls, and the clattering of concrete carrion falling into piles, sending whorls of dust in the air.

As good as Demange and Kevan are at the shaky-cam chaos, they're actually better at the aftermath. (Which is odd, given the lack of character progression, but whatever.) Gary, winded and wounded, sits alone in a sordid shed, enveloped by darkness as his pursers lurk outside; O'Connell has no dialog but he sits and pants and his face contorts into this ineffably pained mess, all dirt and blood and dry salty tears. The camera lingers on him for a few long moments and, as the visceral tension thins, the emotional tension swells.

The scene that packs the headiest, heaviest visceral gut-punch, and the one that would probably adorn Demange's theoretical resume, is a one-take Steadicam shot of the mishandling of a bomb that turns a bar into an inferno and the bar's patrons into charred meat. Eschewing the usual slow-mo, quick-cut, multi-angle pandemonium of actin flicks, Demange keeps the focus on Gary, who's slow to get up (understandably), and then follows him as the freight of the situation hits him, as he enters the burning building and carries out the body of his young friend, cradling him, the music brooding and the air growing hazy. The camera keeps following Gary, the novelty of a long Steadicam shot never becoming gimmick or intrusive or distracting. After the ferocious tremors of the earlier scenes, this long unbroken connection is deeply upsetting, almost intimate.

David Holmes' score acts as consort to the action and never usurps Demange's work. Varied but consistently apt, the music goes from halcyon notes shimmer like dying lights at night to thick, gauzy bass thumps and gently-picked guitar arpeggios. Sometimes it sounds like Explosions in the Sky-lite, but the lack of distinct aural personality kind of works in the film's favor. Identities are nebulous entities here, so why should the music be any different?

As '71 goes on it develops into a sort of espionage thriller, replete with long desolate halls where someone is always lurking around the corner. The dauntless camera is tranquilized, the music almost serene. Something resembling a plot gradually emerges, as Gary unknowingly ends up in an entwinement of treachery. The notions of terrorism, loyalty, and morality are nebulous at best. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys," just so many victims willing to shoot a friend in the back of the head in order to stay alive. It doesn't really come together as a coherent whole, but Jack O'Connell's performance and the aesthetic dexterity on display make '71 better than average.

3.5 / 5

'71 is playing as part of NYFF's main slate on Saturday, Sept 27 at 6:00 pm and Sunday, sept 28 at 6:00 pm