Bloody Sunday

Bloody Sunday the film wins the acclaim of victims' relatives

The strength of the film Bloody Sunday, which received a standing ovation yesterday from the families of those killed 20 years ago in Londonderry, is its almost disturbing success in blending facts and drama.

The combination of Paul Greengrass's superb writing and direction with half a dozen outstanding performances makes this probably the strongest of all fiction on film about the Irish Troubles.

Yet the word fiction is almost a slur on this film, which will be shown on ITV later this month while simultaneously going on general release in cinemas. Yesterday, many of the 450 relatives of Bloody Sunday victims who attended a screening of the film in Londonderry were reduced to tears.

Its authority is based not just on a convincing dialogue, but because it mirrors, in just about all important particulars, the wealth of detail amassed by the current Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

Although the inquiry has years to run it has already built up a picture of a tragedy brought about by an interplay of events, personalities and simple confusion. The achievement of the film is to use this material to underlie its structure while seamlessly grafting on the elements of drama. While it blames the Army for the incident in which 27 youths and men were shot, 14 of them fatally, soldiers are not portrayed as caricatures or stereotypes.

It differentiates between the over-aggressive Brigadier Ford, the struggling Colonel Wilford, and the insightful junior officer listening helplessly back at base as the killings begin. Both Ford and Wilford are real characters.

Its thesis, which is in line with the Saville inquiry's work, is that the Army was at fault but that no central conspiracy existed. Ford, beautifully played by Tim Pigott-Smith, is the villain of the piece, who wants to teach the IRA a lesson. Meanwhile Wilford tries to arrest hooligans, but when the Paras, the psyched-up shock troops, are eventually unleashed they open up not on the IRA but on civilians.

The film is extraordinarily effective in portraying Derry Catholics, catching their twanging banter and showing what it was like to grow up on streets frequented by troops and the IRA.

It features James Nesbitt as a likeable civil rights activist. He is optimistic and upbeat at the outset, then barely able to take in what happens around him, then finally in shock as he realises how many more deaths are bound to follow.

The crackle of military radios, the clatter of Paras jumping from their armoured vehicles, the jangling of 1970s telephones provides flavour. The fact that some of the dialogue is overheard and some of it is half-heard builds the sense of confusion and movement.

The killing-field sequences are shocking and so too are the depictions of bloody corpses amid the rubble.

But much more distressing is the subsequent hospital scene where relatives and the injured are crowded in with the Paras. Bodies lie piled in a corridor as a priest scrambles to give the Last Rites to so many; parents sob as they are told their sons are dead.

It is difficult to watch, and difficult at that moment to be grateful to the film makers for recreating such pain with such accuracy. None the less, they have created a pain-filled masterpiece.