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The Little Industry That Could
David O Mahony on Irish cinema’s relationship with Hollywood.
The orgy of industry self-congratulation that is the awards season has this year held special relevance to Irish filmmakers and cinemagoers alike. Room has been made at the trough for a number of significant contributions from Irish artists to notable prestige pictures such as Joe Wright’s Atonement and Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, despite the all-too predictable media bidding war over Daniel Day-Lewis’s nationality (he’s technically English, but lives in Wicklow with an Irish passport – so he’s ours!). The achievement of obtaining multiple nominations in a variety of disciplines (Best Original Song, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematographer, etc.), entirely excused demonstrative displays of national pride. In defiance of the trendily fatalistic commentary usually proffered on the condition of our little film industry, this recent recognition validates our position on the cinematic world stage. It also comes at a time when Richard LaGravenese’s adaptation of Cecelia Ahern’s prefabricated P.S. I Love You has effectively sold the Americans the ersatz image of Ireland which they helped to create and become an unexpected, and rather worrying, box-office champion.
Whether or not Daniel Day-Lewis will have brought symmetry to his awards shelf with another Oscar, or whether the precociously talented Saoirse Ronan will have destabilising fame thrust upon her at so young an age is, by now, old hat. By the time this introductory article to this themed edition of Film Ireland, which explores aspects of Ireland’s visual culture as it relates to and interacts with Hollywood, has hit the magazine racks, the Oscars will have come and gone. However, whatever the outcome, the awards themselves serve as a useful point of departure for an analysis of this special relationship, a relationship that is predicated on notions of identity and representation.
Before exploring the complex relationship Irish cinema has with Hollywood at present, it will be of benefit to pause and take stock of how these two cinematic traditions have previously interacted. It is often remarked that Ireland’s film industry is in its infancy, and that we remain at the foot of a steep learning curve, anxiously eyeing the summit. This was perhaps the case for the ‘first wave’ of Irish filmmakers in the ’70s and ’80s, with artists such as Bob Quinn, Joe Comerford and Cathal Black, whose pioneering work has proved inspirational to directors working today. Those early Irish filmmakers, as Martin McLoone outlines in his insightful Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary Cinema, were preoccupied with themes that attempted to explore the meaning of the past for the people of Ireland, during that less than prosperous period when emigration to America was draining the west of its potential and casting a pall over the ambitions of the nation. It is to be expected that Irish films made at this time would be informed by a brooding sense of melancholy, and a distrust of America as an alluring land of milk and honey.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland 121.
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