Cal

The film "Cal" is about a young boy who falls in love with Marcella, both Catholic. Cal "works" for the IRA, and he participated in the killing of Marcella's husband. Cal wants to get out of the IRA, but that's not too easy. Anyway, the whole story is really about the relationship between Cal and Marcella, a great Irish love story. A story with an Irish ending...

Irish romantic drama with Helen Mirren and John Lynch

This film by Pat O'Connor from 1984 is a memory of English lessons at the reformed high school in the Federal Republic of Germany. The atmospherically dense and well-acted film is based on the novella of the same name by the Irish author Bernard MacLaverty (*1942), who also wrote the screenplay. The great music comes from Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits), the camera was directed by Jerzy Zielinski from Poland. The film was shot in the eastern Irish port town of Drogheda.

The story is told by Cal (John Lynch, *1961). Young, unemployed and without direction, he provides driving services for the underground IRA. He also took part in the murder of an RUC member. About a year after this crime, he met the attractive Marcella Morton (Helen Mirren, *1945) in the city library, who immediately captivated the young man. It turns out that the Catholic woman was married to the murdered RUC member. Nevertheless, young Cal begins an affair with the slightly older woman...

The Northern Ireland conflict was still very present in the early 1990s when I saw the film for the first time. The later ACADEMY AWARD winner Helen Mirren (she won the award in 2007 for her role in THE QUEEN) acts so impressively in this film that she was awarded the Silver Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. It is completely clear to the viewer why Cal immediately falls in love with this woman. A fantastic performance by this great actress!

the atmosphere, the predictable end, Cal as a kind of new Raskolnikov, the love story , the cinematography, all, each are pieces of a beautiful film about pain, past and regrets. and this is the explanation why "Cal" remains, against the errors, a gem . because it reflects, in delicate-precise manner, a state. ambiguous, profound, Irish at whole, shadow of deep solitude and the illusion to escape from yourself. and, sure, the chance to have two great actors in the lead roles is one of the good things. but its force is result of the belief in the second chance. and in the forgiveness who could change everything. in essence, it is the film of John Lynch who gives a splendid Cal. but, in same measure, it is one of films for remember. not only the traces of the past. but the price of its errors.

This story is truly a tragedy about Northern Ireland. The protagonist is Cal, a sensitive and aimless working-class Catholic youth in Ulster. Cal holds down various low-paying manual jobs during the day and at night, sometimes performs services for the Irish Republican Army, even though he's only a minor participant. In his most significant job, he becomes the getaway driver for the killer of a Protestant policeman, an assignment which upsets him greatly. A year later, he meets Marcella, a lonely, widowed librarian and becomes infatuated with her, and they drift into an affair. However, he learns to his horror that her late husband was the murdered policeman and can't bring himself to tell her. Meanwhile, both the law and the I.R.A. are beginning to close in on him. The film's intentions are good. It's an attempt to tell the story of ordinary people trapped in a place and time of political violence that damages everyone and everything around it, and forces people to make decisions that inevitably have tragic consequences. Unfortunately, there is too much tragedy, too much sadness, so much that it becomes hard to believe. The lead characters are a problem, too. The are weak and resigned people who can only evoke pity. You certainly cannot cheer them on like you could stronger people, the kinds of people who make good things happen for them. The result is tragedy overkill. Eventually, the viewer will also become resigned and glum.

A strangely and unhappily compelling film from the pen over the wildly over-rated Bernard MacLaverty. The script piles improbability on improbability but, given that its premise is so unlikely, perhaps that is the point, a kind of coincidental momentum of the poor and the bad.

Helen Mirren doesn't fare too well as an RUC widow - there are many Irish actresses who could have suited and played this role much more convincingly. John Lynch is fine, looks the part, capturing something of the long-haired, unwashed aesthetic of the hunger-strikers of the time. The best performance is easily by Donal McCann as Lynch's Da, greasily working up a sweat at the local slaughterhouse. Ray McAnally is wasted in a small part.

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but it's an interesting addition to the Troubles archive. Some fine photography and backdrops go a long way towards salvaging a rotten script.