A great document.

Rating: 8/10 (16 September 2002)

"Bloody Sunday" is the now famous story of one of the most violent
episodes in the Northern Ireland conflict. Moreover, it is that which
began the armed struggle. Now that the peace process is engaged, and an
"autonomous" government runs Northern Ireland, including members of all
factions, Paul Greengrass and his producers decided that it was time to
make a film which would once and for all confront the event from both
sides and try to make some sense out of this painful piece of history.
The film does exactly that, and quite well, in a cinéma vérité or
documentary style, a great idea from the filmmaker. He shot the film in
16mm, with no additional lighting, in order to be close to the action,
the people mainly. The filmmaking itself is the best thing about the
film. The style is perfect and works perfectly. We only regret that
being up close to the characters doesn't compensate for us actually
feeling "close to the characters;" to their emotions, their lives,
neither their pains nor sufferings. The filmmaker deliberately chose to
concentrate on the action rather than on the characters. Even the
leading character, Ivan Cooper, the famous civil rights activist for a
non-violent solution, is left for us to decipher. In our absorbing of
these events, we never really know or understand who he is as a human
being. Also, we should always remember that strong leading characters
would help an audience understand the story better than any factual,
political, or historical explanation of any given situation. Take "The
Boxer" for example, by Jim Sheridan, one of the producers of this film.
Therefore, in this sense the only criticism we have in terms of
political is that the British are shown a bit complaisant-like, as if
they had fired upon the crowd by lack of organization. Things were much
more radical than that, but Paul Greengrass is British, and trying very
intelligently to put the matter to rest, rather than open up a new
debate. In any case it's a great tool in helping people understand how
from a peaceful rational conflict, we very often arrive at a conflict
ruled by extreme violence as the only way to instill change. In the end,
when the peaceful solution is defeated, we see young men taking up
weapons and getting ready to fight by other means than marching. It is
now clear that without the violent "civil war" generated by the IRA, the
British government would never have "let go" of Northern Ireland.
Unfortunately, even if we think that's the message, Paul Greengrass
(during a Q and A with the press) doesn't, and considers and consider
that terror is always the same, mixing together the IRA, the ETA in
Spain, the Palestinians in Israel, etc., going further, thus condemning
the IRA for its violence, and affirming that a peaceful solution was
possible. This is a quite naive and simplistic point of view from a
director who made a film which shows something entirely different. In
any event, we are still grateful to Paul for giving us this great matter
to debate