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Arracht Director: Tom Sullivan Talent: Dónall Ó H
éalai, Saise Ní Chuinn, Dara Devaney, Michael McElhatton, Eoin Ó Dubhghaill Released: 3 April The Pieces I Am Director: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Talent: Toni Morrison Released: 6 March Writer and director Tom Sullivan’s austere tale of murder, loss and redemption unfolding against the backdrop of the Great Famine makes for an enjoyable viewing experience, though a thin plot detracts from the film’s potential. Colmán Sharkey and his family live in Connemara in the 1840s, pillars of their Irish-speaking community, fishing and brewing poitín, which Colmán never touches except to hand out to grateful villagers. An Irish Royal Navy deserter joins Colmán at the behest of the parish priest, and speaks of the rotting smell which precedes the terrible blight ruining the potato crop in large swathes of the country. Yet Colmán is hopeful – perhaps the blight is constrained to those parts. Hopeful too that the English aristocrat whose land they live on will be reasonable, and not raise the rates beyond everyone’s ability to pay. But the deserter plays his part one night, and all of Colmán’s hopes are dashed. His family is ruined, his life reduced to a bare, Gollum-like existence, surviving on fish and seaweed in a dank crevice off the mainland. Then he meets a young girl, and the flame of hope flickers again. Let’s begin with the criticism: the plot is undercooked, a sketch of a narrative rather than the final draft. I would be lying if I did not say that I was disappointed by the simple, oddly tension-less resolution. That said, Sullivan has made some fantastic choices. The actors, especially the lead Dónall Ó Héalai, are compelling, conveying pathos-filled dignity or real malevolence, depending on their dramatic role. DP Kate McCullough finds a kind of Irish magic-hour, everything bathed in slate- or green-grey light. Kíla’s score is immersive. And the constant Gaelic speech rhythms and vocal intonations are deeply affective, transporting you directly into a fragile world, vulnerable to imperialist cruelty and the shocking natural catastrophe it helped to wreak. TL The late Toni Morrison, whose debut novel The Bluest Eye was published 50 years ago, said she wrote it because she wanted to read it. This is what makes her a towering beacon in the world of literature even after the final chapter of her own life has been written. The Nobel-Prize winning author changed the narrative for African-Americans and their portrayal in literature but also gave voice to women, through their exterior joys and interior pains whilst eliminating “the white gaze”. People found in Morrison “a new language about themselves about the condition they live in and that discovery gives them a sense of transcendence,” says David Carrasco, the Harvard historian. Director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders first encountered Morrison for a photo shoot back in 1981, the seed of this documentary was sown in 2014. The intimacy between director and subject matter is evident on screen. The Pieces I Am deftly weaves the life story of Morrison with a direct-to-camera interview, a series of edits from other ones and fascinating contributions and insights from academics and friends. Tracing her story back to her sharecropper grandparents and a moment in which her mother caught her innocently scratching the letters FUC… into the sidewalk with a pebble and being chastised on the spot – “ultimately I knew words had power” – Morrison set in trail a relationship with language which would define not just her life but that of countless others. There’s an easy, informative, flow to every aspect of The Pieces I Am which makes it a truly, elevated, educational experience. MMD 77