ARTISTIC HEAVYWEIGHT: NEIL JORDAN DISCUSSES 'MICHAEL COLLINS' AND THE CREATION OF MODERN IRELAND

By Michael Wilmington

(Chicago Tribune, November 3, 1996)

Neil Jordan is one major international filmmaker who almost always looks as if he'd be more at ease in a Dublin pub, carousing with writers and hellions, than on a movie set. He keeps shaking his hair out of his eyes; his talk is peppered with "yeahs," "ya knows" and four-letter gab; he easily slips between convoluted literary expression and slurry slang; he's as direct as a thunderstorm. Or a poet.

In fact that's how the 45-year-old writer-director of "Michael Collins" started. As a young literary lion from Sligo, Ireland he set Dublin ablaze with his short stories ("Night in Tunisia") and novels ("The Past"). But, instead of becoming another Flannery O'Brien or James Joyce, Jordan (who admits the heavyweight Irish literary heritage intimidated him) swerved into movies. After being hired as a consultant on John Boorman's 1981 Arthurian epic "Excalibur," Jordan rapidly became Ireland's most renowned and rewarded filmmaker. (It was also on "Excalibur" that he met his future Collins in the person of a strapping 6-foot-4-inch, 29-year-old Ballymena, Northern Ireland native named Liam Neeson, who was playing Gawain and romancing the film's Guenevere, Helen Mirren).

Jordan's 1982 debut movie was the moody thriller "Angel" (a k a "Danny Boy" in the U.S.). But I still remember the shock of my first Jordan film: his once-neglected 1984 classic "The Company of Wolves" with its wild erotic shocks and dreams-within-dreams.

From there on, he pursued a twisty up-and-down course through lyrical Irish-British films ("Mona Lisa," "The Miracle") and straight-jacketed big-money Hollywood stuff ("High Spirits," "We're No Angels") - until finally managing to conquer the world of art house films (with 1992's "The Crying Game") and mass-market multiplexes (with 1994's "Interview With the Vampire.") "Michael Collins" - which won the 1996 Venice Film festival's Golden Lion for best film, and its best actor award (for Neeson) - is a dream project Jordan has nurtured since 1982. Few films can lay any justifiable claim to the title of "national epic," but "Michael Collins" has that blessing - or curse. It's the story, after all of not one, but two fathers of modern Ireland: the official "da," Ireland's one time rebel and long-time president Eamon de Valera (played in the film by Alan Rickman) and the hidden hero, Michael Collins, the brilliant guerrilla leader whose bloody 1916-1922 raids brought England to the bargaining table, where he negotiated Ireland's partial independence.

It's a movie brimming with passion, seething with intrigue, raging with violence. And it probably confirms Jordan as the best moviemaker from Irish stock since John Ford. Tribune - How did "Michael Collins" get made?

Jordan - In 1982, after I finished "Angel," (producer) David Puttnam commissioned it from me. I knew something about (Collins), but not a lot.

I began to read stuff, research. . . . Finally, I saw it as the unique circumstance within which one character actually embodied a pivotal period of Irish history, from 1916 to 1922, when the country I live in, north and south, was actually born.

Over the next 10 years, I kept trying to make it. After I made "Mona Lisa," I tried to make it. After "Crying Game," I tried to make it. And eventually, I got to make it after "Interview With the Vampire," the first experience I had working in the (Hollywood) studios which was actually positive.

Q - Is it essentially the film you wanted to make back in 1983?

A - Yeah. The only compromise was money. (The budget was $28 million, low-level for a period epic.) Warners basically said to me: "The reason we're doing this project is because you're so passionate about it." They regarded it as uncommercial.

Q - What is Collins' reputation in Ireland now?

A - He's very, very well known, now. He's one of the few figures of that period that anybody in Ireland can identify with.

And it's odd, because they don't identify with De Valera at all.

Q - When did you cast Liam Neeson as Collins?

A - Liam Neeson was a young actor on the Irish stage. He'd been a boxer. He played this character in Brian Friel's "Translations" and he was extraordinary in it.

He was the person I (thought of first) for Collins. I showed the script to Liam. I showed it to (Jordan's long-time producer) Stephen Woolley. I showed it to Puttnam. I showed it to (cinematographer) Chris Menges. But I hadn't got anything like the clout to make this film.

Q - In the interim, of course, Neeson became a huge star.

A - People say: "You cast this really big Hollywood actor!" I cast him a long time ago. The star conversation is one I can never quite get my head around.

It was like casting Julia (Roberts) in "Collins." When I met her, I thought "Yeah, she can do this role really, really well." I'm not thinking of "Pretty Woman" (or) the Julia Roberts phenomenon.

But it kind of creeps into the conversation, and it's irritating.

The worst thing that happens to people when they become stars is that they have this desire to be liked. (Liam and I) had long discussions about Collins being a divided character. You can see (Liam) as a divided person, as a kind of hero and villain in one character - which is great for an actor. I realized that Liam could play Collins with all that demonic energy, that fierce (ability) to make those decisions. And not even seem to think twice about them.

Q - The political clash between the two Irish leaders - Collins and the mathematician De Valera - seems like a clash between art and science.

A - Or it's a war between the heart and the head, really.

Q - How many years did De Valera dominate Irish politics?

A - Basically up until 1973. He died in 1975.

Q - Why is Collins preferred now?

A - (Collins) was far more worldly. And far less ideological. De Valera gave the Catholic Church a special place in the constitution. He had extensive censorship of books and cinema and theater. During the Second World War, De Valera kept the country neutral. There are some people who say that was his finest hour, that the country would have been destroyed. But neutrality was a moral issue, just like everything else in that war. You're talking about the Third Reich. You're talking about the camps. You're talking about the Holocaust.

De Valera presided over a very gray country. I mean, I grew up in it. I know.

Q - I've heard Irish emigres curse John Ford's "The Quiet Man" as a travesty. What do the Irish really think of our great Irish-American director?

A - He's regarded well. I love John Ford. (He's) wonderful. "The Rising of the Moon"! Hilarious. John Ford, when he made those movies, was an Irish immigrant. He came back to the United States with a rather rosy view of Ireland. But still, "The Quiet Man" is a good movie. And I thought John Ford would have made a marvelous job of this movie ("Michael Collins"), actually. When I was making this movie, there was ferocious opposition in the British press.

Q - Because of the current political situation with the IRA?

A - Britain is as anxious as anybody to get out of the situation (in Ireland). So the continuation of that war is nonsense, really. And everybody is cracking up, including the IRA. It's odd that two places that live so close to each other, that are so dependent about each other, are still so myopic about each other.

Q - One of the great things about "Michael Collins" is its extraordinary atmosphere of chaos and violence.

A - Well, the story is about a man who built an army for a certain purpose - and then tried to decommission it, but found he couldn't. It's a story about a guy introducing chaos and mayhem into a political situation. It's a tragedy. A tragedy of betrayals.

(At the start), the movie agrees with the ideals of these people. Then we see these ideas being achieved in part, and then a series of betrayals are enacted, where each man is betrayed by the other.

But in the end, they're (all) betrayed by the ideal, aren't they? (The one) that they obeyed in the first place. The ideal of that kind of pristine republic - that's out of time, out of place.

If the Collins film shows anything, it's how difficult it is to remove weapons from a conqueror, and how difficult the act of peacemaking is.

Q - You're following the facts?

A - I'm following the facts rigidly, actually. Perhaps too rigidly, some people would say.

It's an objective depiction of a tragic crisis that should never happen again. It's not a polemic. It's not a propaganda piece. (It's) kind of a demonstration of the chaos theory of history, really.

People will inevitably rise against oppression. The rising against oppression will cause such chaos that it will result in civil war. And the civil war will actually end in more chaos.

If ("Michael Collins") was made in the '60s, like "The Battle of Algiers" - that story could end on a happy note - a glorious future, the triumph of the people.

But there's no way this story could end up like that

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page - now not accessable