Bloody Sunday Film Analysis

‘Bloody Sunday’, directed by Paul Greengrass, was released in 2002, thirty years after the initial event that occurred in Derry on the 30th of January, 1972. The film is a British-Irish co-production by Bord Scannan Na hEireann, also funded by Granada Television, Hell’s Kitchen films and the Portman Entertainment Group, as well as the Irish Film Board. The film won best film at the Berlin Film Festival, as well as a BAFTA Award for Best Photography and Lighting and picked up the British Independent Film Award for Best Director and Actor (James Nesbitt). The storyline uses a historical narrative based on one of the most controversial and well-known historical events that took place during the ‘troubles’ when a civil rights protest organised

Yet, all witnesses to the event claimed that the shots were fired into an unarmed crowd, and no British officers were harmed during the day. The Troubles in Northern Ireland has always been a major concern for British censorship and Government interference in the media. However, after the Saville Inquiry, it became possible to develop the case further in terms of media. Yet, controversy surrounded this as it had been stated that the Northern Ireland Government initially identified television as a new outlet for publicity and propaganda.

What makes the film challenging for Greengrass is the basis that the film was recreating actual events and living off primary accounts, involving stories from those who were affected and involved. The film based its version of events on a book which challenges the myths surrounding the day, entitled ‘Eyewitness Bloody Sunday: The Truth’ by Don Mullen, who participated in the March when he was fifteen years old. Roy Foster observes how important it is to observe the contradictions and rejections of certain myths, as there is “a growing interest in pinpointing discontinuities rather than ironing out elisions.”(pg. 36) Greengrass incorporates both old and

Some scenes were filmed in Ballymun, Co. dublin, but most of it was shot in Derry. This feature is giving the audience an exact setting for where the events of Bloody Sunday unfolded, recreating the scene for viewers. ‘Bloody Sunday’ involved those who had lost loved ones during the day, in the process of filmmaking. He incorporated the personal stories of those initially involved, in order to create emotionally authentic scenes. The community seems to be held together by those seen as authoritative figures, such as Ivan Cooper, who plays a key role in the film, played by James Nesbitt. Cooper was one of the main organisers of the Civil Rights march in question, and believed that human rights could overcome the religious prejudice that had overtaken the North at the time, even though he was born into a Protestant family, in Londonderry, in 1944. His role in the march as peace-keeper undermines the unionist and British historical arguments that the Civil Rights movement could be classed as republicanism in disguise. It is interesting that Nesbitt was chosen to play him, as he himself was raised in a protestant community, similar to Ivan