“I’m still seeing it through nine-year-old eyes; I am still seeing it the same way,” Joe, the protagonist in Alessandra Celesia’s documentary, “The Flats,” concedes. He is an old, frazzled republican living in New Lodge, an enclave in the heart of Belfast that had experienced the worst of sectarian violence during the Troubles. Even though it has been a while since the horrors of those bloody decades subsided, Joe hasn’t been coping very well, not unlike many of his generation who lived through the carnage.
Joe’s scars run deep. As a nine-year-old, he witnessed his seventeen-year-old uncle shot to death by the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force). A direct encounter with the devastating brutality of that moment and the loss of his favorite uncle plunged him into grief and guilt, tailing him forever. The episode also marked the beginning of his political consciousness as an impressionable teenager. The massive churn, high stakes, deepening fault lines, and prejudices making their way amongst the youth made sure Joe became embedded in the conflict. In no time, he found himself joining the ranks of the dissidents, hurling petrol bombs.
In the conversations with a psychologist, Rita, that undergird the film, he admits the act of handling the bomb made him feel like a man. The turbulence of the Troubles ensured kids and teenagers didn’t get a chance to lead healthy childhoods or even imagine what a harmless and happy childhood looked like. That period got skipped, with the teenagers imbibing all the excesses and vigilante streaks of the adults that surrounded them. Archival footage shot through in a repressively blue hue and texture has been judiciously kept to the bare minimum in the film yet effectively establishes a snapshot of the era. Most of the grainy footage is focused on the young taking action on the streets.
Joe was a proactive protestor. Those values have become so deeply entrenched in him that he still remains firmly attached to his community. He actively cares and is passionately concerned when drug dealers try to lure kids in his area. Joe is worried by its implications. He scans the area every day, alert to what’s happening. No one but him seems bothered. He is a kind man, terribly aware and reflective of his surroundings but he is also unable to sheath himself when it gets too trying. Along with several surviving acquaintances and friends, he has been scathed too badly by the Troubles. However, they don’t actively talk about it or discuss the long shadow it cast on their whole lives.
It is an unspoken pain that has marked them out, threading them together but also throwing them into self-contained, isolating bubbles of mourning. Healing has been deferred for so long Joe can simply see no other way of inhabiting his emotional inner life without the painful memories always hovering close. He cannot envisage recovering from the life-shaping trauma that racked his growing-up years.
Then, there are the dramatic re-enactments of a few moments from his life after his uncle’s death that intersperse the film. The actors are all locals. Joe precisely directs their every gesture, dictating exact placement and position within the space of a restaged memory. Gradually, Celesia lets us into the lives and anxieties of these actors. Both the women playing Joe’s mother and grandmother, Jolene and Angie, have endured and fought off abusive husbands.
Sean, the boy who plays the nine-year-old Joe, stands as an emblem of the future, a hopeful vision of Ireland climbing out of its ruinous past and defining its new, boundless scope. As Joe urges Jolene to head out into the next chapter of her life, we can’t help but realize how Joe himself is in dire need of turning his life over. He missed the bus and got stuck. Even though Joe is too inextricably entwined with his community, he is also conscious that distance from the “murder mile,” which was New Lodge, might have done him good and eased him out of tragedy and its near-permanent residues.
Celesia wrenchingly extracts a broad scale of poignance and shattering intimate drama from the tough, bruising depth of memory that informs the narrative, There is honest, searching and piercing engagement in this film’s attitude to the past, especially in how it can almost entirely rupture the present if we let the past hijack everything. The weight of the socio-political crosscurrents bears down on every one of us. Joe chooses to remain intensely connected with it, often at his own peril. The triumph of the film lies in its ability to make us admire his persistence, be alarmed at his extremity of tactics, and, above all, ponder the shape and reach of the past.
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