How do you prove that you don’t speak a language? Especially when that language, English, is a tool of centuries-old oppression wielded by one of the largest global empires in history, and your mother tongue, Irish, is spoken by less than 10,000 people in a highly contested corner of the world? For childhood best friends Naoise Ó Cairealláin and Liam Óg Ó Hannaidh, this question isn’t a thought exercise but a call to arms; as Naoise’s father Arlo (Michael Fassbender), a high-ranking IRA member who faked his own death to escape prison, drilled into his son since childhood: “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.”
Kneecap, writer-director Rich Peppiatt’s “biopic in real time,” is a fictionalized account of how Naoise (stage name Móglaí Bap), Liam (stage name Mo Chara), and teacher, interpreter, and amateur beatmaker JJ Ó Dochartaigh (stage name DJ Provaí) formed an anarchic rap group named after their city’s second favorite pastime (this being Belfast, you can guess the first.) Naoise and Liam may be part of the post-Troubles generation, but their revolutionary spirit lives on, especially when Liam is hauled in front of a British police officer (not-so-affectionately known as a “peeler”) for selling drugs. To the hard-nosed Detective Ellis (Josie Walker), his refusal to speak the Queen’s English is an infuriating act of willful insubordination. For Liam, it’s a principled assertion of his right to speak his ancestral tongue. There’s also a political urgency at play: the Irish Language Act, which would have recognized Irish as on par with English and granted commensurate funding and legal status, was introduced in 2017 but failed to pass due to political gridlock. Behind the film’s outrageous (and highly entertaining) depictions of drug-fueled recording sessions and sectarian feuding is the mundane grind of political organizing and campaigning, which paid off when the legislation finally passed in 2022.
Which isn’t to say its backers fully supported Kneecap’s NC-17 lyrics, off-screen antics (such as a promotional mural featuring a police van on fire), and on-stage personas, which included DJ Provaí in a tri-color Irish flag balaclava, mooning the audience with the words “Brits Out” sharpied on his bum. Detractors said they promoted violence, while activists fumed that the group’s controversial stance undermined their mission. But Naoise and Liam, who formed the group in their teens, know there’s no such thing as bad publicity — even negative press got their cause out there. Early on, JJ rightly observes that Irish is like the dodo bird: on the verge of extinction and preserved behind glass. It was studied but not widely used — a historic relic instead of a cultural force. Kneecap changed that by fusing the raucous with the revolutionary, bringing their ancestral language to a younger audience through a technicolor swirl of drugs (their first album, 3CAG, is a reference to MDMA), potty humor, and a throbbing middle finger to the RUC and the monarchy.
Throughout the film, the band, who play themselves, refer to Northern Ireland as “the North of Ireland,” pointedly implying the Republic’s unity and denying England’s occupation of the territory. At one point, a shot of a Palestinian flag makes clear where they stand on another geopolitical conflict (the Irish have rallied behind Palestine for decades; in a post-screening Q&A, Liam states a similar support for other oppressed peoples, including Black Americans, and cites Kneecap’s affinity for hip-hop as a gesture of solidarity rather than appropriation.)
Peppiatt, who is British, is a former tabloid journalist who directed one of the band’s music videos before convincing the lads to let him tell their story for an international audience (Kneecap is the first Irish-language film to premiere at Sundance Film Festival.) The result is as visually frenetic as the group’s hyperactive sound. Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting is an obvious influence, with Kneecap’s cinematography adapting to whatever substance the boys happen to have ingested at the moment. There’s also a liberal dose of Scott Pilgrim-esque irreverence; Peppiatt shuffles through a grab bag of techniques to supplement Liam’s voiceover, including animated flourishes, a ketamine-fueled claymation sequence, and visual puns that incorporate the city’s famous murals. He was also inspired by Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie, with its bold stylistic choices and whimsical renderings of a specific time and place. Amelie’s swoony romance isn’t quite on display, unless you count Liam’s dalliance with a fervid Nationalist who promises to “blow [him] like a Brighton hotel” or his uneasy situationship with a Protestant girl. But Peppiatt leans into Jeunet’s hyper-saturated colors, never more effective than during a memorable scene where Liam, in a Kelly green tracksuit (the lads’ tracksuit game is strong), is chased by members of the Orange Order, a Unionist fraternal group, in their trademark uniforms.
Early on, audiences are told that “a country without a language is only half a country.” Artists from the Republic and the North have long pushed the boundaries of someone else’s language; one can basically draw a straight line from Joyce and Beckett in the 20th century to Anna Burns’ Milkman and Eimear McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, both published within the past 15 years. Thanks to Kneecap, Irish people can now hear some self-professed “low-life scum” tell their stories in their own tongue, and maybe inspire others to do the same — starting with Peppiatt, who decided to learn Irish after meeting the group. What started as a bullet might now be an olive branch.
DIRECTOR: Rich Peppiatt; CAST: Móglaí Bap, Mo Chara, DJ Próvai, Michael Fassbender; DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Classics; IN THEATERS: August 2; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
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