Un adiós irlandés

Turlough McCaffrey lives in London while his brother Lorcan with Down syndrome lives with their mother on the family farm in Ireland. Turlough returns home for his mother's funeral. Lorcan wants to stay and work the farm. Turlough sees that as impossible and insists that he goes live with their aunt. Local priest Father O'Shea has a list from their mother.

This won the Oscar and BAFTA. It is a good story although it is short. In that, the story feels like it could be more. It isn't anything too big or completely new. I don't think that actors with Down syndrome is terribly new. I can see this being expanded into a full length movie.

Paddy Jenkins ("Father O'Shea") acts well as the conduit here between two brothers who are unexpectedly reunited by the death of their mother. "Turlough" (Seamus O'Hara) has left Northern Ireland to work in Engand and when he returns, is set on selling the family home still lived in by his younger brother "Lorcan" who has Down Syndrome. As you'd expect, the humour here is dark ("is she still warm?") and the language quite ripe, but this has a wonderful honesty to it as the latter lad tries to work his way through a list of one hundred things their mum wanted to do before she died! There's some fun with an urn and some ti-chi, and they even go into space - well, sort of! Good fun with strong undercurrents of family, love and affection.

An okay film, with an average script.

Unoriginal, and not overly well shot (dinner table scene did not flow).

Predictable story. We have seen many bucket list films before.

Dialogue was sketchy and weird timing... felt unintentionally awkward and it didn't flow.

The acting was fine, but certainly it did have a stand out performance by James Martin as brother Lorcan, who was very, very good.

We watched all the nominated shorts (short list), and couldn't work out why this was on the list, it felt the weakest by far. That's not to say it's a bad film. But there was nothing original about it, and it felt overly sentimental.

For this to rise to the top is a surprise, and for it to win an Oscar is bizarre. Guess it goes to show that anything is possible! So regardless of my thoughts, congratulation to the team.

I have now rewatched this film 5 times and each time note a different nuance, expression or film angle.

The script is hilarious throughout, mightily irreverent but laugh out loud funny.

It finished leaving the question "what next" for the brothers. But I see only a very happy ending.

For only three actors to produce such a slick coherent work is remarkable. Well done to all three. The northern Irish accent can some times be difficult to interpret but I heard every syllabul. The opening sequence of the bleak open moorland leading to the family home echoed the plot of the bereaved brothers.

A masterpiece as far as I'm concerned.

An Irish Goodbye (2022) -

This was an amusing little film, but I'm not sure that I would call it comical, because it's actually how a lot of people do interact, although I suppose that the priest was at least a humorous character, with all of his errors and slips ups.

It was an enjoyable story of loss, love between brothers and how people move on in their grief.

Was it so outstanding a story that it deserved an Oscar? I don't know? I've seen a lot of short films and many that have delivered more of a punch, but perhaps I'm looking for something different from the films that I watch. However, I couldn't help but wonder if it wasn't awarded because one of the lead actors was otherwise abled.

Because of the farm setting and the somber tone of their Mothers death, I did feel that it bore some resemblance to 'Gods Own Country' (2017), although the two leads in that were obviously not brothers. It just had a similar vibe about it.

As with a lot of short films there just wasn't enough of it to really get in to, in order to see whether it was good or not, with an extended plot it could be very well received and genuinely entertaining, not that this snippet of their lives wasn't fun too. What they managed to fit in to half an hour was good and there was plenty to laugh with, if not so much to laugh at.

629.84/1000.