“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children,” IRA freedom fighter Bobby Sands famously wrote in his diary while incarcerated. However, decades after his death following a sixty-six day hunger strike, that laughter remains hard won. His quote resonates throughout Alessandra Celesia’s Oscar-qualifying documentary The Flats, a penetrating look at the unresolved and unacknowledged trauma from The Troubles that continues to haunt and linger over subsequent generations of the Irish community.
Joe McNally, a longtime resident of West Belfast, takes centre stage and his story, like so many of those who survived The Troubles, is one of unwavering resolve in the face of unendurable hardship. At nine years old, his beloved uncle was brutally murdered by the Shankhill Butchers and within months, Joe threw his first petrol bomb. Tattoos and a spell in jail as a self-described “ordinary decent criminal” speak to the past that’s written plainly in his demeanor that still seethes with visible anger and pain.
At first, given his hardened exterior, Joe doesn’t seem the type to open up and spill his innermost thoughts, particularly when so many like him prefer to leave the past unspoken. However, Celesia utilizes some intriguing devices that meaningfully transport Joe through the fog of memory. First, we follow him into his sessions with Rita, his counselor. It’s here that Joe begins to grapple with what it means that so much of his past remains blisteringly present at the forefront of his mind. Next, Celesia stages re-enactments and dramatizations of key moments in Joe’s life — echoing Joe Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing — as a way of allowing him to reach the emotions he has kept long buried within. This latter technique offers mixed results; it’s a conceptual gambit that simply can’t compete with Joe’s own, immediately compelling voice.
As the picture moves to its second half — away from Joe, his endearing dog named Freedom, and his current battle against drug dealers in his tower block — Celesia brings in Joe’s neighbors. Among them is Jolene, a young mother and aspiring singer, who has seen up close the effects of drug abuse in their community, with her sister left bedridden, catatonic, and under their mother’s care. There’s also Angie, who only now is beginning to accept the physical abuse she endured during The Troubles wasn’t her fault, and reveals a shocking story involving a gun she once kept hidden for the IRA.
Among the collected stories in The Flats — frequently sad and brutal in equal measure — the most eye-opening may come from Jolene. As she watches the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II with Angie and her partner on television, Jolene genuinely questions her nationality. Even though she’s born and raised in Ireland, she admits that when she’s faced with the nationality question on government forms, she isn’t quite whether to make down that she’s Irish or British. Perhaps more than the scars and graves, and the bitter and painful memories, the wrenching legacy of The Troubles may be found in those like Jolene, who remain uncertain of where they actually belong.
Weaving between candid interviews, recreations, and archival footage, Celesia and editor Frederic Fichefet build a steady, rhythmic pace to the picture that allows for a cumulative and revealing perspective of generational trauma. The Flats makes clear how the violence of The Troubles refracts through time in domestic fights, drug and alcohol abuse, and the stifling belief that getting out and building a new future seems impossible. It may sound like the picture offers little in the way of hope, but in bringing the lives of Joe and his neighbors slowly together, Celesia offers the promise that through mutual support and determination, the prospect of a better future is within reach.
Director, screenplay: Alessandra Celesia
Producers: Jean-Laurent Csinidis, Geneviève De Bauw, Jeremiah Cullinane, John McIlduff
Cinematography: Francois Chambe
Sound: Quentin Jacques, Gilles Benardeau
Production companies: Films de Force Majeure (France), Thank You & Good Night Productions (Belgium), Planet Korda Pictures (Ireland), Dumbworld (United Kingdom)
In English
114 minutes
