a son, a father, and the damning of the Irish (or any damned group)

Rating: 9/10 (1 June 2015)

In the movie In the Name of the Father, we get a story involving injustice - people who are accused and found guilty of crimes they didn't commit - but why it works is centrally two things: even if you don't know a thing about the IRA (though it might help to know just a little) or the struggles in Belfast in the 1970's and how it involved the United Kingdom, people see injustice happening every day, with many races. If one were to put this on a double bill with the Burns doc The Central Park Five, the coincidences would be extraordinary: the rampant torture via police to the accused, the lack of any strong legal defense, and the tampering of evidence. There is that aspect, the US against THEM element, which is simple enough. But trickier, and what works greater, is the father son element of the story, where Daniel Day Lewis is Gerry Conlon is in prison for life along with his father (a very innocent man) Giuseppe, who is there for the simple reason of accused corroboration.
In a way it's probably the most accessible film that has been made, that I can think of off the top of my head, about the controversies and "war" of the IRA over the years. I don't see Sheridan taking sides either way exactly with the IRA except for the fact of the killing innocent people, those "innocent bystanders" that die in that pub bombing, is very wrong. The context and framing of it is what counts; Conlon had no real political aspirations either way, and when we first see him, he's basically a young punk/hippie who gets chased by IRA guards as they think his stick is a sniper. He goes to London to cool off/find work/hang low, and it's actually in the scene where he first is going off - by the ship - that he and his father have the interaction that speaks to what will come: Giuseppe is a natural, loving father, maybe at worst a little awkward or 'normal', while Gerry is just a young, aimless youth, uncomfortable with any affection or care.
The crime and arrest happen due to the sort of circumstances that happens with Wrong Man scenarios (not the Hitchcock sort, to be sure). The Wrong-Place-Wrong-Time thing, and it leads one of the most harrowing section of the film, where Conlon is interrogated. Day-Lewis here is explosive, charged, frightened, crying, under mental and physical abuse, but yet he keeps it all in check. Another actor might have gone over the top here, but somehow it always feels just right, calibrated even in the highly charged emotional range. Then he and the others are found guilty (oh darn that homeless alibi!) and sent off to prison.
Apparently, according to Ebert's review, some facts were shuffled around to add to the drama - namely that the Conlon father/son shared a cell. Perhaps it is convenient dramatically speaking, and there's even a period in these years they're in there together, that Gerry spends less time with his dad, trying to escape through drugs and other (somehow friendly) prisoners. If there's one issue with this mid-section involving prison, it's that most everyone - with the exception perhaps until the other Irish man (no spoilers here) comes to prison - gets along and there's no real horror to go through. Maybe that's kind of refreshing in a sense, usually prison is shown in movies as a very rough place. If anything the political situation - the Conlons being innocent - makes it the most frenetic and harried for Gerry and his father.
But, again, it's the tone of this personal side, just showing DDL and Postlethwaite together, that makes the film work so well. We may hope, and see it probably as conventional, that Gerry is set in these injustice-wheels and everything's spinning until he can get help (in the form here of Emma Thompson, in maybe the only one-dimensional role in the film, not that she is poor in any way acting-wise). But deep down, the bond between these two is what counts, and Gerry's own growth as a person is marked as he spends more time behind bars. So In the Name of the Father is successful on the fronts of what the story is about, but also how it's about it via its emotional stakes, especially in the third act when things become uncertain for the decent father. And if anything, as great as Lewis is (and that's a given, of course, look at his track record), Postlethwaite rises up to be his equal. In sort, an acting masters class in what is mostly a heavy film, with a lot of heart and (even once or twice, early on before the s*** goes down) a little light-heartedness.