Independent Leyton Orient Forum

Dunners wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 8:02 am Napoleon

FFS, Ridley.

What a mess of a film. Some okay bits, but this really should have been so much better. A wasted opportunity which, I'm disappointed to say, isn't worth your time or money at the cinema.

Sure, watching on a smaller screen at home will mean not experiencing some of the more cinematic moments, but IMO they simply are not good enough to justify the effort.

Dunners wrote: ↑Mon Aug 12, 2024 12:38 pm

Dunners wrote: ↑Sun Nov 26, 2023 8:02 am Napoleon

FFS, Ridley.

What a mess of a film. Some okay bits, but this really should have been so much better. A wasted opportunity which, I'm disappointed to say, isn't worth your time or money at the cinema.

Sure, watching on a smaller screen at home will mean not experiencing some of the more cinematic moments, but IMO they simply are not good enough to justify the effort.

I watched this again last night just to see if it was as bad as I recalled.

It wasn't. It was worse. Not only does it fail to deliver in any historically accurate sense, but the battle scenes are actually pretty crap. I've seen far better CGI efforts in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones.

Dunners wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2024 12:57 pm Might have to pop into the cinema to watch this.

Long slender neck wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 9:58 am So yet another crap sequel?

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2024 11:36 pm Last year's BBC documentary series Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland. Christ. Heavy, heavy going at times but excellent TV and choice of interviewees. Shameful how little we get taught about this part of our very recent history.

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 12:49 pm

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Sun Aug 25, 2024 11:36 pm Last year's BBC documentary series Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland. Christ. Heavy, heavy going at times but excellent TV and choice of interviewees. Shameful how little we get taught about this part of our very recent history.

Almost finished episode 4. Still good but a tough watch now, the weight of the endless tragedy, heartbreak and senseless death/violence seems to literally come out of the screen at you.

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 12:52 pm My non-British OH keeps asking "did you know about this?" after every other atrocity or tragedy and I have to say "no" 80% of the time. "But this is the UK, why not?". Good question really.

Dunners wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 12:58 pm

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 12:52 pm My non-British OH keeps asking "did you know about this?" after every other atrocity or tragedy and I have to say "no" 80% of the time. "But this is the UK, why not?". Good question really.

It is. My kids both thought I was pulling their legs when I was telling them about what was effectively a civil war in the UK in our lifetimes. So I made them watch this.

What I would say however is that maybe, just maybe, the silence has been part of the formula for trying to consign the past to the past. There has been a younger generation born into a relatively peaceful Northern Ireland for whom the notion of returning to those times is sickening. Trying to solve past differences can be more difficult than everyone sort-of agreeing to just forget (or, at least, pretend to forget).

That's not to say that everything is settled in Northern Ireland. It still has the potential to erupt again.

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 1:13 pm I get that but feels like there's an extra layer considering there a spectacular ignorance - very much including myself in this - on the mainland, it's almost as if mainland UK doesn't think there's any kind of reckoning or understanding necessary. It's not like postwar Germany when they did their best to confront what happened during the Nazi era (granted, far from a direct comparison) nor is it like Spain where they very deliberately tried to 'forget' about the Guerra Civil for decades, with mixed results. I daresay there's been a degree of looking back in Northern Ireland, while also being careful not to poke a bear that's still not far from the surface, but just a bit crazy how history taught here can be from the Korean War to Vietnam but nothing about our own, pretty recent, stuff. Not that it would probably amount to much more that "IRA bad, UK army/Govt 'good guys'" as it's always harder to assess your own actions.

Dunners wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 1:51 pm

Proposition Joe wrote: ↑Thu Aug 29, 2024 1:13 pm I get that but feels like there's an extra layer considering there a spectacular ignorance - very much including myself in this - on the mainland, it's almost as if mainland UK doesn't think there's any kind of reckoning or understanding necessary. It's not like postwar Germany when they did their best to confront what happened during the Nazi era (granted, far from a direct comparison) nor is it like Spain where they very deliberately tried to 'forget' about the Guerra Civil for decades, with mixed results. I daresay there's been a degree of looking back in Northern Ireland, while also being careful not to poke a bear that's still not far from the surface, but just a bit crazy how history taught here can be from the Korean War to Vietnam but nothing about our own, pretty recent, stuff. Not that it would probably amount to much more that "IRA bad, UK army/Govt 'good guys'" as it's always harder to assess your own actions.

I think that's the thing though. No matter how you approach teaching people about this recent history, you're always going to be getting it wrong in somebody's opinion, which will just risk inflaming things. But the degree of ignorance on the mainland was really brought to light during the Brexit referendum. Nobody who voted for Brexit properly thought through, or cared about, the implications for Northern Ireland.

I have family in the Republic and north of the border and the resigned consensus appears to be that it is largely best forgotten about until the passage of time and emergence of new generations means a reignition of hostilities is unlikely. It could well become a topic in history lessons a hundred years for now, but for now it's just too raw.

The long term trend had been for the catholic population to eventually overtake the protestant population so that a peaceful reunification became thinkable. Interestingly, declining fertility rates in both communities and the emergence of mass immigration as a thing has threatened to challenge that trend. This is one of the reasons why some loyalists and republicans were united in the recent anti-immigration protests in Belfast (there were the usual other reasons, of course).