Like a goth to the flame

Far, far away from the cappuccino swilling metrosexuals of contemporary Irish cinema lies Middletown, a gothic, twisted address in scenic Nowhere, Ulster and the setting for the much fancied debut feature from director Brian Kirk.

Inspired by any number of Johnny Cash’s murderously poetic ballads, the art of Caravaggio and the unique hellfire of Ulster Scots evangelism, Middletown effortlessly coalesces into a gripping gothic drama and an intriguing allegory.
“It’s odd the way that people are suddenly discussing Islamic fundamentalism like it’s a new thing,” says the director when I catch up with him at a screening in the Cork Film Festival.
“Fundamentalism is deeply embedded in our culture. When we were preparing, we were listening to a lot of Johnny Cash and it all came together. All that gothic religious feeling is germane to our culture. The whole tradition of preaching in the southern states of America was exported from the north of Ireland. The idiom of Ulster Scots was crucial to the evolution of the accent of the southern preacher. There are fascinating historical links there but fundamentalism is also present in contemporary life so we were attempting to work that in too, make things more parabolic.”
Sure enough, it’s difficult to pin a time or place on the finished film. The accents and illicit smuggling suggest we’re in the border counties. The kohl-sporting modernity of the female lead (Eva Birthistle) makes us think of the 1960s. The closed entropic setting, however, implies that no world exists beyond. The villagers are trapped as surely as the unfortunate characters of Jerome Bixby’s It’s A Good Life. Is Mr. Kirk trying to tell us something about the actual place of Middletown, near where he grew up in Armagh?
“I’m happy to say it’s not specific to that Middletown, Armagh”, smiles Brian. “There are two Middletowns in Ireland and 247 in the world. When I was getting the train from Providence to New York recently, the second stop was a Middletown. But it’s funny, when the film screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, we weren’t sure what they’d make of it. We pitched it as a film about fundamentalism but we wondered if it would be viewed as a contemporary film or as a period film. Will they relate to it as an Irish film? And it was amazing. We were screening where the twin towers once cast a shadow and one woman in the audience started talking about the Deep South. Another woman said, ‘What are you talking about, this is the country we live in.' I thought that was great. It means they’ve taken the film as their own.”
The positive reception afforded by New Yorkers has been well earned. Although Brian’s late father, a social worker, was a movie buff, Armagh is not an obvious place to produce an exciting young filmmaker. Happily, the success of local cinematographer Seamus McGarvey inspired Mr Kirk to give it a go. Since then he has worked steadily, making several award-winning shorts and working on TV shows such as Funland and Murphy’s Law. His moniker can also be found on Brotherhood, an Irish-American Sopranos clone detailing the antics of Rhode Island mobsters.
“Television was not part of my life growing up”, he recalls. “I never watched it as a child. But you reach a point when you have made five short films and you’ve maxed out your cards, so you take work in TV. But it’s been great to me. I won a BAFTA with my first TV job. I’ve had access to quality crews and cast. I’ve signed with the CAA agency. And it also bought me time and space to develop a whole slate of projects. So Daragh (Carville), who wrote Middletown has been working with me on a teen film and an Iraq project and a Frankenstein movie.”
Really? How does one go about putting a fresh spin on Mary Shelley’s monster?
“Well, amazingly the story of Victor Frankenstein has never been made as a film,” explains Brian. “He goes from 17 – 24 in the story. He’s basically a kid and a child deformed by the death of his mother. His determination to conquer that inspires him to create life, so he’s like someone who has a child as a teenager. He doesn’t know what to do with it. Then rejection makes the monster. So Daragh’s script is a big family drama in the style of the original book.”
For the moment, one can catch up with Messrs Kirk and Carville’s penchant for dynastical friction in Middletown. For those unwashed in the blood, the film centres on a simmering fraternal rivalry between Matthew Macfadyen’s canting preacher Gabriel and his brother Jim, an everyman cross-border trader essayed by Daniel Mays. As the film opens, Gabriel Hunter, who has been designated as ‘saved’ at a young age, is returning to the place of his birth. A self-righteous zealot, he is appalled to find his home parish awash with cockfighting and booze. Even his brother, now married and expecting a child with the publican’s daughter (Birthistle), seems hell-bent on eternal damnation. Sadly, the chastised denizens of this sleepy hamlet are soon won over by the rhetoric and a biblical showdown is assured.
“I talked to this fundamentalist Belfast guy,” recalls Brian. “And he said ‘at the end of the day you are facing hell and I am facing heaven.’ The phrase he used was ‘I am quids in’. But that’s the whole idea of the elect – the idea is you are saved and reborn once you accept god has a special plan for you and then you find your place. It’s a very selective view that suggests that Christ died for certain people and not for others. I love that weird paradox. In a strange way, the character Jim has a similar problem. Because their father has decided he is the worthless brother, it has retarded his growth. But then, by being anointed as the good brother, Gabriel has lived in a black and white world. When he comes home everything is grey and he simply collapses under the weight of his duty to God.”
While masochistic cinemagoers have had many opportunities to ponder the evils inflicted on the populace by Catholic priests, Middletown’s preacher more readily sits with such grand precursors as Harry Powell and Elmer Gantry.
“It was always important that we were sticking with a minister,” Brian tells me. “There is a fixity and rigour about it. Roman Catholicism is very theatrical. We wanted something buttoned down. I remember being on the Isle of Lewis ten years ago and the swings were chained up on Sundays. I was walking with a hangover one day and I needed a cure so I went round the back of a hotel. It was full of course. So you could get in the bar, but the kids couldn’t play. We wanted Middletown to be that kind of place.”
Well, Brian Kirk’s berg is still a super destination – even if we wouldn’t want to live there.