By now, you’ve probably heard that Kings, an Irish-language film, is being put forward for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the 2008 Oscars. Will this poignant drama about middle-aged men who meet up in London, thirty years after they emigrated from the west of Ireland, eventually be our Solomon And Gaenor? That is the very least it deserves. In the wrong hands such a tale might have become the kind of improving title that school-children were once made to sit through, on hunkers and hard floor, in the run up to their Irish exams. Director Tom Collins and co—writer Jimmy Murphy (on whose stage play the film is based) are, evidently, not the wrong hands.
Neither gimmicky nor reliant on its exotic dialect, this is a genuinely wonderful all-ages show. The group of friends at the centre of the drama represent an all but extinct class of Irish navvy. As the old gang reunite in Kilburn for the wake of their friend Jackie (Sean O Tarpaigh) the tensions run high. Joe (Meaney) is the one that did well for himself but he’s wracked by a cocaine habit and his failure to look after Jackie. Git (O’Connor) and the fiery Jap (O’Kelly) are down-and-outs proper who blame Joe for his success and their destitution.
The resulting drama simmers heatedly in the manner of Twelve Angry Men. As the alcohol kicks in, the underlying frictions rise and fall and the swearing gets more pungent until a final devastating revelation puts everything in perspective. There are moments of intense heartbreak. This writer still can’t think of Peadar O Treasaigh (playing Jackie’s father) without snivelling. But the great tragedy here is not Jackie, it is the sad limbo these men occupy. The Ireland they left is long gone. So too the London they arrived in. They roam the streets like dinosaurs long after the Cretaceous period has come to a close.
Obviously Kings provides a keenly felt history lesson. Many will think it a timely mirror to reflect back our own immigrant past. Others will view it as a time capsule documenting Irish masculinity of old. But it is also a lovely, well-fashioned film. Mr. Collins has opened up Mr. Murphy’s play with no little success. Background details are revealed in deft little moments. The final, pub-bound scene manages to conga line away from its theatrical origins. And what could be the saddest story in the world is made cathartic and cleansing.