I Am Belfast

The most whim­si­cal­ly auda­cious move by Mark Cousins in a career fuelled by whim­si­cal audac­i­ty is the cast­ing of a serene old woman as the city of Belfast. I Am Belfast is part doc­u­men­tary poem root­ed in the abstract, and part its writer/director’s spe­cif­ic attempt to make sense of the birth­place that he fled decades ago. Peach-clad Hele­na Bereen walks the streets of Belfast with an air of stud­ied con­tem­pla­tion while, in voice-over, she speaks lyri­cal lines. Some­times she mono­logues, at oth­ers times she is in con­ver­sa­tion with Cousins.

The pair begin by express­ing child­like admi­ra­tion for colours and struc­tures. They find art with­in every­day set­tings, not­ing the rela­tion­ship between char­coal streets and pur­ple skies, observ­ing the serendip­i­tous syn­chronic­i­ty between paint on man­made sur­faces and the clothes of passers-by. Rothko paint­ings are ref­er­enced and so are rous­ing words by Eleanor Roo­sevelt. This audio­vi­su­al com­men­tary is evoca­tive, but con­nect­ing with the film’s goal of giv­ing ordi­nary life the mys­tery and mag­ic of cin­e­ma requires an aban­don­ment of cyn­i­cism that may prompt inter­nal strug­gle. With­out audi­ence coop­er­a­tion, the old lady seems like a dream­er drift­ing through the urban land­scape talk­ing to her imag­i­nary friend.

At about the 30 minute mark, the focus shifts to the big­ger, deep­er, sad­der, more his­toric pic­ture. ​“I could soft­en the sto­ry,” says Old Lady Belfast, ​“Don’t soft­en the sto­ry,” replies Cousins. Hard facts mate­ri­alise. Between 1971 and 1991, Belfast’s pop­u­la­tion shrank from 400,000 to 281,000. ​“119,000 peo­ple gave up on me”. ​“I was one of them,” admits Cousins. ​“If I could have run I would have,” counter-admits Belfast. Their whim­si­cal ver­bal dance has pirou­et­ted into deep waters in one bold and fleet-foot­ed move.

Archive footage illus­trates ​‘The Trou­bles’, but this film isn’t about lin­ger­ing in the past as much as trac­ing its effect to the present. The nar­ra­tive refo­cus­es on cul­tur­al regen­er­a­tion and the diverse eth­nic groups that have brought new hope to the city, except the tone is now more com­plex. In the same breath that the pair cel­e­brate progress, they lament the Catholic/​Protestant divide that now phys­i­cal­ly man­i­fests in walls through­out the city.

By now it is mov­ing­ly self-evi­dent that using a gen­tle cur­rent of inquis­i­tive obser­va­tions, Cousins has swept him­self and Lady Belfast into a pic­ture about a high­ly com­plex real­i­ty. It is all the more pow­er­ful because the brush and the can­vas come from his sin­gu­lar imag­i­na­tion. Hele­na Bereen still looks serene in pink, but the details that she observes are stark. The film evokes the lega­cy of social dishar­mo­ny, using The Crea­ture From The Black Lagoon to illus­trate that the sur­face may seem tran­quil but below hatred and ten­sion still lurk, ready to drag any­one down.

Let­ting Mark Cousins sweeps you up in his elab­o­rate but con­sid­ered per­spec­tive of Belfast may cause feet to leave the ground. It’s worth let­ting this hap­pen as the view where he oats is sub­lime­ly per­cep­tive. The film reach­es a crescen­do with two visu­al metaphors that use every­day imagery to sym­bol­ise mas­sive progress. The wider sig­nif­i­cance of these two nar­ra­tive peaks is ques­tion­able but Cousins’ sin­cer­i­ty is absolute and very moving.