A world away from the overblown, star vehicles of the nineties, the likes of Patriot Games, The Devils Own, and Blown Away, 2008 saw a rash of small, intimate dramas about "The Troubles" - the innocuous sounding name given to the period of ethnic violence surrounding Northern Ireland, circa late 1960's to late 1990's, during which some 3500 people were killed. Prison drama Hunger showcased the staggering levels of self-destruction people were prepared to commit to in service to ideology, Fifty Dead Men Walking explored the conflicted loyalty and paranoia of an undercover operative, and here Five Minutes of Heaven, easily the simplest of the three and yet the most ambitious, charts the cyclical nature of violence and our struggle to break free from it.
In only his second English language film following the disastrous Bodysnatchers remake The Invasion, German director Oliver Hirschbiegel once again demonstrates, as he did in Downfall, an uncanny knack for taking broad elements of sweeping history and zeroing in on the aching humanity found at their center. Hirschbiegel is a director seemingly fascinated with the ripple effect and the idea that the crucial, formative events that shape people are actually very few in number, the knock-on of which can easily cripple people emotionally, devastate whole families, and destroy entire lives.
The first of three very distinctive acts opens in 1975 in Lurgan, Belfast and recounts the real-life murder of Catholic teenager Jim Griffin by fellow teenager Alistair Little as part of Little's initiation into loyalist paramilitary group the UVF. It's a tense twenty odd minutes that ably encapsulates the tragedy of youthful indoctrination, misplaced rage, and, of all things, peer pressure. Taking great care to pop their pimples in the mirror first, the young Little (Mark Davison) and his friends, on their way to the local youth club disco for soda pop and an alibi, carry out the random execution of Griffin - a catholic factory worker guilty of nothing more than being on the other side - in his living room, while Griffin's nine-year-old brother Joe watches helplessly through the window.
Flashforward some thirty-odd years and we pick-up the story with both Joe (James Nesbitt) and Little (Liam Neeson) each being chauffeured to a country manor where they are set to meet for the first time since the shooting at the behest of a production company, who want to film their encounter as part of a program on forgiveness. Saddled with a slightly awkward inner monologue it's a testament to the strength of Nesbitt's performance that he is able to so effectively convey the extent to which his brother's shooting wrecked his life. Upstaging Liam Neeson isn't really possible, such is his gravitas, but Nesbitt's Joe is such an addictive bundle of repressed rage and nervous energy that the film deflates ever-so-slightly whenever the camera leaves his side.
Now stuck in a dead end job he hates, his father died of a heart attack, and his mother went to her grave irrationally blaming him for not somehow preventing Jim's death, Joe is driven to distraction by the sheer, maddening randomness of what he witnessed that night ("Three bullets went into my brother's head, but did you know another one hit a picture of a cat? Did you know that?"). Maybe he'll shake Little's hand, or maybe he'll stick him with the knife he's got clipped to his belt (giving himself "five minutes of heaven"). He hasn't decided.
Little, meanwhile, is a picture of reform. Repentant after twelve years in prison, and having renounced violence, his transformation has seen him elevated to the status of an international advisor on conflict mediation, traveling all over the world advocating peace and telling his story. Infuriated beyond all comprehension by the very comfortable, very respectable living Little has made out of the event that tore his life apart, Joe is deeply resentful. He's resentful of the life Little has, the life he feels was taken from him, and most of all he's resentful that he's now expected to just forgive and forget for the sake of a big of voyeuristic rubbernecking. It's not for nothing that this meeting is built around a television program, a nod to the sad fact that grief is now a commodity, bought and sold like so much chattel, and that what used to be available on the end of the pier for sixpence is now beamed into people's homes for the price of a cable subscription.
The final act has drawn some derision, seem by some as lightweight and more than a little arbitrary. Seeking some some semblance of equilibrium, illustrating the other side in Little's all-consuming guilt, we close on a somewhat unlikely encounter. But the more you think about it the more it fits so perfectly, the finality somehow empowering and appropriate. It's a small moment, staggeringly effective, and one that is every bit as frustratingly random as that which began the story some thirty years previous. Life, after all, is rarely neat and tidy.
DVD Bonus Features
A five minute behind-the-scenes featurette, containing interviews with cast and director, and a theatrical trailer.
"Five Minutes of Heaven" is on sale April 27, 2010 and is not rated. Drama. Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel. Written by Guy Hibbert. Starring Anamaria Marinca, James Nesbitt, Liam Neeson, Mark Davison.
