Trying to Find Your Way Out of It With Whatever Means You Have: Kenneth Branagh on Belfast | Interviews

My view of Billy Clanton going up our street dragging his son and then punching Mr. Stewart as it is in the film at the end, I said to young Jude, “That’s exactly how I saw it from where you were standing in that distance and I had never seen a punch like that. I’d never seen a piece of violence like that.” It’s a loss of innocence moment where the unexplained and the violent, you know, the gray areas that it seems to bring up are very difficult to cope with I think.

And at the time it also drove me back to the movies thinking, “Well, then what happens when they do that? In the movies, the bad guys get found out. The good guy will ride into town, and also, given my own personal preoccupations, the good guy will get the girl.” So yes, it is about trying to find your way out of it with whatever means you have, because religion in my case was nothing more than a massive scare tactic. It was very effective. I was scared.

I love the way you use the movies of the era as commentary and counterpoint as well as showing us the the way the characters were surrounded by those stories. Tell me about the choice to show the clips in color even though the rest of the movie is black-and-white.

It was partly to underline that for me, movies most certainly were an escape from what was happening and that the color itself was this immersive leap into a world so far away from Belfast, which I saw in shades of gray, where it rained a lot. I saw so many westerns on television where even Monument Valley was not all dusky red or anything. It was shades of grey and black. Not like the color of the movies and in a way the live quality of the theater, like the piece of “A Christmas Carol” that we show. That’s how it was exploding in my head. One ran to it because it was so different, it was so transporting, and it was so much of a relief from what we were seeing. And it was also absolutely tied up in the family experience. That’s when we went to see big films. 

I saw the James Bond film last weekend in 4DX with shaky seats, the smoke, and the water and everything. And then I looked back at “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” and of course, we were persuaded by those amazing visual effects and felt immersed in it. But really all that happened was that the audience leaned forward and somehow you were completely captivated by it. And it was that. It was utter transportation from utter escape, utter relief, and release.

It is a challenge to tell an adult story through the eyes of a child and give us both perspectives.