Excellent adaptation that's as good as most Brit dramatisations and better than many. I watched it again on YouTube and found it just as riveting as first time round with some superb performances from David Kelly, Donal McCann, Bryan Murray, Cyril Cusack, Angela Harding and, of course, the luminescent Peter O'Toole.
The tale follows the lives of those caught up in the almost perpetual struggle of labour versus Employer, always emphasising the human dimensions over the tub-thumping, nationalistic or moralising that it could easily have succumbed to. The pernicious Brits are rarely mentioned by name and the middle class landlord and factory owners may have English accents but we aren't told where they were born. This works well because the plight of those good people speaks for itself and gives us an understanding of the stresses underpinning the revolution without any rabble-rousing rhetoric. Indeed the drama could have been played out in London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Middlesborough, Manchester or any other industrial city. The poverty of Dublin was pretty much the same as the poverty of anywhere else - just the grinding lack of anything but muck and drudgery.
So it's the people of Dublin, and the fights they fight against horrible circumstances, who are the point of it all. Bob Fitzpatrick, whose understated, indomitable character leads him to a poignant pass on the troopship to the Trenches, and his wife, Mary, left behind with her child. Barney Mulhall, whose crippling seems to be only slightly worse than the drudgery it stopped. Father O'Connor, who is caught up in a moral dilemma that tears his naive mind apart and makes us wonder if that's what has already made Father Giffley turn to drink to stifle his own sobs. And of course, poor old Rashers Tierney who never had a chance from the day of his birth. A cruel world but indomitable spirits.
The tale follows the lives of those caught up in the almost perpetual struggle of labour versus Employer, always emphasising the human dimensions over the tub-thumping, nationalistic or moralising that it could easily have succumbed to. The pernicious Brits are rarely mentioned by name and the middle class landlord and factory owners may have English accents but we aren't told where they were born. This works well because the plight of those good people speaks for itself and gives us an understanding of the stresses underpinning the revolution without any rabble-rousing rhetoric. Indeed the drama could have been played out in London, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Middlesborough, Manchester or any other industrial city. The poverty of Dublin was pretty much the same as the poverty of anywhere else - just the grinding lack of anything but muck and drudgery.
So it's the people of Dublin, and the fights they fight against horrible circumstances, who are the point of it all. Bob Fitzpatrick, whose understated, indomitable character leads him to a poignant pass on the troopship to the Trenches, and his wife, Mary, left behind with her child. Barney Mulhall, whose crippling seems to be only slightly worse than the drudgery it stopped. Father O'Connor, who is caught up in a moral dilemma that tears his naive mind apart and makes us wonder if that's what has already made Father Giffley turn to drink to stifle his own sobs. And of course, poor old Rashers Tierney who never had a chance from the day of his birth. A cruel world but indomitable spirits.