Will Penn goes on a journey with charming Irish documentary Nothing to Declare, available to stream on Disney+ now.
Given recent headlines out of America, a feel-good story about customs and border control seems a tall order. The news is often so bleak that it seems inconceivable that it could have ever existed.
Darndale of 1985 seems like an unlikely place to begin in addressing this. But in Garret Daly’s Nothing to Declare, Keith Byrne and Noel Murray detail their remarkable journey from Dublin to New York that has become the stuff of local legend. “Far from innocent”, they say with many a wry smile. And with that twinkle in their eye, you know what they mean. They are natural storytellers, chronicling the strange way that neither of them remembers who suggested Dun Laoghaire, or jumping on a ferry. As adults, they ask why some man in London didn’t just report them to the police. But as kids, they present us with the adventure of escaping security. They deliver it all with cheeky smiles and jokes aplenty.
Their delivery turns incredulous as they dissect their boarding of an Air India flight to New York. It seems unbelievable. How could they have? But incredulity is stayed by small details, like hearing the thunderous roar of the engines, the sudden sense that they didn’t know what they were doing. By the time they are picked up by New York City cops, their excitement is palpable; with descriptions of hotel rooms “bigger than my house”, their now middle-aged eyes are ablaze with a childlike wonder. What the documentary conjures with just a few newspaper clippings, photos, and radio excerpts is truly impressive, helped along by their narration. After all, how couldn’t it be? It is the stuff of local legend.
The film itself does a lot with very little – the story of two friends who were just doing it for a bit of a laugh and watching them crack jokes about it together all these years later is very easygoing. And while Keith and Noel are obviously enjoying their moment in the spotlight, we are reminded that time moves on. Nothing to Declare offers a reflection of a world lost– of course, borders have become stricter and there is a sense that the world grows steadily smaller. But their story conjures that sense of childhood innocence and adventure, and laughing about it together all those years later.
Available to stream on Disney+ now.
