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This is a great film and I’ve watched it several times. The photography is stunning. The musical score is brilliant. The characters are believable and endearing. The film does not take sides except to say “Enough!” Enough bloodshed. Enough hatred. Enough poverty. Northern Ireland has had enough.
Daniel Day Lewis and Emily Watson give stellar performances. I saw Emily Watson in “Breaking the Waves” which I did not understand at all, but I did recognize a fine actress. I’ve seen all of Daniel Day Lewis’ films–even his early releases. This is one of my favorite DDL films–a difficult choice as he has made so many excellent films. The supporting cast is composed of first class actors. The scenes are terribly realistic. I still jump when a bomb explodes early in the movie, and the boxing scenes are fabulous. (In the fifties I was a fan of Carmine Basilio, so I know what the real thing looks like.)
The contrast of stark, war-torn Belfast with tenacious individuals attempting to lead relatively normal lives–marrying, having children, teaching day-school, mopping floors, is heart-rending. Who wouldn’t root for peace?
Those who have taken one side or the other in this awful conflict might not appreciate the neutrality of the film. That is the whole point. Most of the Irish are fed up and want to get on with their lives. I thought the coincidence of the film release with the current peace process effort was grand.
It’s odd that a film about such a volatile subject (Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”) should be so understated in its way, but Jim Sheridan’s “The Boxer” is just that–despite the occasional explosion and political assassination. The trailers that I saw in theaters a few years back almost suggested one of those “lovers-torn-apart-in-a-world-gone-mad” films that we’ve all come to know and find suspect. But the tone of the actual film is really quite muted.
What makes “The Boxer” ring true is the very tentativeness of the relationship between Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson’s characters. One time teenage lovers, they have been separated for 14 years while Danny Flynn (Day-Lewis) served a prison term for unspecified political activity. Released now, at the age of 32, he wants only to be left alone and to resume his boxing career. To Sheridan’s credit, the irony that the BOXER has, in fact, become a man of peace is not dwelled upon. Nor is the tentative reunion with his lost love exactly the stuff of Sturm und Drang.
There is an overall sense of Irish reserve in the film, a sense that brutal political realities have left all of its characters emotionally stunted. That may be “The Boxer’s” greatest achievement, in fact, that the human cost of this political tragedy is not just measured in the body counts, but in the thousands of “small deaths” each individual experiences almost daily.
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