Ireland: Behind the Wire

A bleak alternative to the bland footage of Northern Ireland that we normally get to see. The makers of this documentary offer not so much an analysis of the political situation as a record of the psychological toll. The mesh of sectarianism and nationalism is scarcely touched upon. Rather, the film argues in terms of the legacies of British capitalism and colonialism, and states that a minority is being persecuted just as relentlessly as anywhere else in the world. Through interviews with men who have been tortured, images of barricades and destruction, the sight of a decidedly non-passive army in action, and the strain registered on faces young and old, one can begin to understand what it is like to live in perpetual fear in a country that has become a breeding ground for violence. The film, in revealing the economic discrepancies between England and Northern Ireland, and showing up much of the complacency that dominates our thinking, makes a little more comprehensible the desperate measures taken by extremists.