“It was a country road turned very blue, and in the summer we used to walk there.” That was the sentence that changed everything for acclaimed Irish author Edna O’Brien. The blue road described in that opening salvo of an early draft of a short story was both the first domino to fall in her marriage and start of what would become a remarkable literary career. If only any of us could write a sentence that good. It’s that dyad, one of many contained within the talented and tortured, trailblazing and insecure author that Sinéad O’Shea captures in Blue Road – The Edna O’Brien Story. This gift of a documentary effortlessly travels across decades, chronicling a legendary and, at times, truly unbelievable life, with insight from the woman herself, right up until the final months before her passing.
In a contemporary literary world powered by BookTok, so-called “New Adult” fiction, and what seems to be a shying away from confrontational material, it’s easy to understand how trained pharmacist turned “untrained” novelist Edna O’Brien’s arrival on the scene in 1960 with “The Country Girls” shook the establishment to its foundations. Not only was a woman daring to break through the largely male-dominated domain of letters, O’Brien was doing so by shining a light on the plight of Irish working class women, a subject that was almost entirely ignored. The author’s frank account of coming-of-age and sexuality, and its subsequent trilogy, was banned in Ireland, deemed that it “was filth and should not be allowed inside any decent home.”
The irony of the government defending decency as her own home was falling apart was likely not lost of O’Brien. What started as passionate and scandalous May-December romance with Irish writer Ernest Gébler, quickly turned sour. Gébler envied her talent, to the point of attempting to take credit for her success by, shockingly, adding his own false claims in the gaps of her personal diaries he found. Moreover, for a man who presented him as worldly, his view of domestic life was strictly old-fashioned and patriarchal. It was all O’Brien could do to break free, and did she ever.
With skillful editing by Gretta Ohle, O’Shea makes terrific use of a bounty of archival television interviews, curated footage, and photographs to emphasize the size of O’Brien’s fame. Even today, it boggles the mind that an author could count Robert Mitchum as a lover, while also notching Richard Burton (whom she declined) and Marlon Brando (who just drank milk all night) as potential paramours. At the height of her popularity, it’s almost taken for granted that she could rely on Sean Connery showing up to make sure she’s okay after her first, medically guided dose of LSD.
However, despite plenty of showbiz anecdotes, O’Shea never loses the thread of O’Brien’s revered talent. Through passages from her memoir and personal diaries (read by Jessie Buckley), and a modest amount of talking head interviews including Gabriel Byrne and O’Brien’s one-time student Walter Mosely, Blue Road conveys a deep appreciation for the author’s craft and how it contrasted with her troubled personal life. Wisely, the documentary never attempts any easy answers or cheap psychological rationalizations for the overlaps between O’Brien’s work and personal affairs, and instead lets the author speak for herself. It’s something like a miracle that O’Shea got O’Brien on camera for interview segments before she passed this summer. It’s perfectly fitting that when asked if she had any regrets about her life, O’Brien gamely replies, “I wish it had been funnier.”
Born to violent father, married and then divorced to a destructive husband, O’Brien was often put to task for her negative view of men and masculinity. She defended herself as best she could, but it was the pen that was her greatest weapon. “Write what you know in your guts to be true. And if it’s true, if it is, a reader will respond to it. And if it’s not true, to hell with it,” was O’Brien’s guiding mantra. And Blue Road makes it clear, she lived with a blazing, inspiring truth that refused to be contained.
Director: Sinéad O’Shea
Screenplay: Sinéad O’Shea
Cast: Edna O’Brien, Jessie Buckley, Gabriel Byrne, Carlo Gebler, Sasha Gebler, Walter Mosley
Producers: Claire McCabe, Eleanor Emptage, Sinéad O’Shea
Cinematography: Eoin McLoughlin
Editing: Gretta Ohle
Music: Richard Skelton, George Brennan
Production companies: SOS Productions Ltd. (Ireland), Tara Films (United Kingdom)
World sales: Submarine Entertainment
Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF Docs)
In English
99 minutes
