Peter Charney’s review published on Letterboxd:
Belfast is a warm and sweet look at childhood nostalgia and connection to place. The plot is slighter than I expected considering the film’s best picture frontrunner status, but I was very charmed by the many little moments with friends, grandparents, and school crushes. The film is set amidst political and religious tensions, but we only come to experience, or even understand, them through the perspective of a child who only dreams of being at the pictures with his family and marrying the brightest girl in his class.
Caitriona Balfe and Jamie Dornan give great performances as parents to Jude Hill’s precocious protagonist. Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds are also delightfully in love with love. I appreciated the use of b&w vs. color cinematography (wish this was further explored!) and some of Branagh’s more stylized sequences; I was often reminded of Terence Davies’ The Long Day Closes. Knowing Branagh, I expected the direction to feel heavy-handed at times, but the film is quite understated. I actually wish we were given more space to feel some of the weightier emotional pieces of the narrative so that the ending would similarly hit harder.
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