A `greater truth'?

NEW YORK -- For 13 years, Neil Jordan wanted to make Michael Collins and have Liam Neeson play the Irish revolutionary. Only recently, after their respective successes with Interview with the Vampire and Schindler's List, did they get the green light. After all, few studios wanted to touch the controversial subject. "The English establishment were very scared of any examination of this period because they don't come out of it very well," Jordan says. "The executions of 1916 did happen. The massacre in the football stadium did happen."

Well, yes, but not the way Jordan depicts it. Says Neeson, "No, an armored car did not go in, but they used machine guns and rifles. That was Neil Jordan's way of showing the power and might of the British Empire and the anonymous face of it. It's a dramatist's right to do that to show a greater truth."

But to focus on the British is to miss the point, says Jordan. "This is an examination of the conscience of us as a people. People think of the conflict of that period between Ireland and Britain, but it's as much a conflict within Ireland, between different ideas of Irishness."

Aidan Quinn, who plays Collins's colleague-turned-rival, Harry Boland, agrees. "This is a painful film because the Irish character and the Irish people are as culpable in their own history as the English."

That's why Collins seemed a worthy subject to Jordan. "He's a figure who straddled all the contradictions of Irish politics. I thought a movie about the character could straddle all those contradictions as well. An unfortunate by-product of that is that it has the potential of drawing flak from every side of the conflict."

After all, there are still people in Ireland who remain bitter over Collins's compromises with Britain. "Neil told me that the sign that marks his birthplace in West Cork is still graffiti'd by the descendants of people who were anti-Treaty-ites," Neeson says.

As a result, Collins was virtually erased from Irish history. Neeson, who grew up in Belfast, says he learned nothing about Collins in school. Quinn, who was born in Chicago but spent much of his childhood in Dublin, says "The Easter Rebellion in 1916 is the one thing in Irish history that is drilled into the head of every kid. I didn't know much about it other than that."

Jordan hopes that "one thing this film does is resurrect that period and give it some dignity. One of the awful by-products of the current Provisional IRA's activities has been to make people embarrassed about the War of Independence itself. It was an entirely different movement. It had the support of 80 percent of the population."

What will most rankle Jordan's countrymen about his version of the intra-Irish conflict is his portrait of national hero Éamon de Valera, who led the nation for 40 years but whom the film depicts much more negatively than Collins. "Collins was someone who tried to move from violence to pacifism, and he failed," explains Jordan. "De Valera was actually the figure who insisted the conflict continue, even to the point of civil war. Over the years, de Valera's stock has fallen. He established this rigid, censorious country that I grew up in. He was an intransigent idealist. In many ways, he's a very admirable figure, but the years we show in the movie, 1916 to 1922, were his worst. The portrait of de Valera is my own perception of him. Many people disagree with me."

And indeed Alan Rickman, best known for his villainous roles, refused to play de Valera as an outright bad guy. "You must never judge the characters you play," he argues. "If you're playing Hitler, you have to play him as a real person. If you're judging them, then you're outside and inside, and that's impossible."

-- Gary Susman