9-year-old Buddy lives through the beginning of the Troubles in 1969 Belfast, as sectarian violence splits his community. Meanwhile, his family debates whether to leave the only home they have ever known. Kenneth Branagh's autobiographical film is a tender, mournful portrait of childhood on the edge of history.
Belfast is a 2021 drama and biography film directed by Kenneth Branagh. This breakdown covers 4 techniques (2 cinematography and 2 narrative), each with the scene where you can see it. If you like how it is made, Schindler's List uses several of the same techniques.
Choosing to shoot in black and white to take away the comfort and pleasure of color. The film feels more serious, and you watch as a witness.
How this film uses it
Haris Zambarloukos shoots Belfast's past in high-contrast black-and-white. The childhood memories end up looking like treasured photographs and like war documentary, so they feel tender and unstable at once.
Where to see it
The film's opening sequence. It is shot in saturated color and drops to black-and-white the moment it steps into the past, so the color change works as a doorway into memory.
Adding 1 colored element to an otherwise black-and-white image, or a brief color sequence to a black-and-white film. The contrast pulls your eye and gives that color a lot of meaning.
How this film uses it
Film and theater screens inside the film burst into color while the world around them stays black-and-white. Cinema and performance are the escapes from the grey weight of political reality.
Where to see it
Buddy and his family watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the cinema. The screen blazes in color while the audience watches in black-and-white.
Drawing on the filmmaker's own life but keeping it at arm's length, often through a fictional stand-in. The result is precise and unsentimental, and it can question how memory flatters us.
How this film uses it
Branagh puts himself into Buddy, a boy who understands that something terrible is happening but doesn't fully get why. Seeing it through a child makes the sectarian violence feel both specific and universal.
Where to see it
Buddy watching the first night of riots and asking what it means. The film's distance comes from the gap between his innocence and the adults' fear.
Framing the story as an old person's memory of events from decades ago. You know from the start how things ended, so even the happy memories carry some grief.
How this film uses it
Branagh dedicates the film to those who stayed, those who left and those who were lost. That makes the whole film an act of looking back and bearing witness. You never see the old man, yet his point of view is behind every shot the child appears in.
Where to see it
The closing dedication cards. They turn the film from a memory into a memorial.
Questions
Belfast: quick answers
What filmmaking techniques does Belfast use?
CineCode breaks down 4 techniques in Belfast (2021): Black-and-White as Moral Urgency, Isolated Color Insert, Autobiographical Distance and Elderly Frame Narrative.
Who directed Belfast?
Kenneth Branagh directed Belfast, released in 2021. CineCode also covers Thor (2011).
What films are similar to Belfast?
Films that share techniques with Belfast include Schindler's List (1993), Roma (2018), Wings of Desire (1987), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
