{"id":8601,"date":"2022-08-22T14:14:07","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T13:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qpol.qub.ac.uk\/?p=8601"},"modified":"2022-08-22T14:14:07","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T13:14:07","slug":"neil-jordans-michael-collins-1996-reimagining-the-post-conflict-nation-on-the-global-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/neil-jordans-michael-collins-1996-reimagining-the-post-conflict-nation-on-the-global-stage\/","title":{"rendered":"Neil Jordan\u2019s Michael Collins (1996): (Re)Imagining the \u2018Post\u2019-Conflict Nation on the Global Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Monday 22 August 2022 marks one of the more significant dates in the Irish decade of centenaries, the one-hundredth anniversary of the death of the revolutionary leader, Michael Collins. In three reflections based on their research, historians for QUB look at the significance of Collins\u2019s death in the context of 1922 and how his legacy and memory has been fashioned in politics and film in the intervening century. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the first article here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the second article here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Collins <\/em>(1996) has been described, by Michael Dwyer, as \u2018the most important film made in or about Ireland in the first century of cinema\u2019. Directed by Ireland\u2019s Neil Jordan and produced by Hollywood\u2019s Warner Brothers, Michael Collins <\/em>was, in 1996, the largest cinematic production ever undertaken in Ireland \u2013 especially by an Irish director. With a Hollywood-budget of US$28 million, and an A-list cast (including Northern Ireland\u2019s Liam Neeson as Michael Collins, Julia Roberts as Kitty Kiernan, and Alan Rickman as Eamon de Valera, to name but a few), the film broke all of Ireland\u2019s previous box-office records, coming second only to James Cameron\u2019s Titanic <\/em>(1997) in the country\u2019s all-time box-office list in 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite Michael Collins<\/em>\u2019s undeniable Hollywood dimensions and unrivalled box-office success, the real importance of the film was a result not of the film\u2019s cinematic spectacle, but of its depiction of Ireland \u2013 and Ireland\u2019s early-twentieth century history \u2013 at a time when that history was in the process of being (re)imagined. Neil Jordan\u2019s Michael Collins <\/em>was, after all, primarily a national film text merely dressed, accessorised, and spruced up, by a global film-production giant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Produced and released during the period of the peace process coinciding with the 1994 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, Michael Collins <\/em>\u2013 depicting the life and career of the film\u2019s namesake, the man thought to stand at the precipice of the country\u2019s fall into nearly 80 years of conflict \u2013 was Ireland\u2019s first wholesale cinematic step towards a re-evaluation and re-consideration of their supposedly \u2018post\u2019-conflict national identity. In his Michael Collins: Screenplay and Film Diary<\/em>, Neil Jordan said that, from the outset, the film set a \u2018fever running\u2019 in Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the high costs typically associated with intra-Irish film production, the film was shot predominantly in Ireland, using a complex of recognisable Irish streets, sites and scenery. The transformation and utilisation of the old Grangegorman psychiatric hospital in Dublin attracted thousands of fascinated onlookers daily, forcing the authorities to close the centre of the city to the public every Sunday. In fact, the public demand for access to the film-set was so intense that, for the weekend following the end of filming, the spectacular reconstruction \u2013 including full-sized replicas of the fa\u00e7ades of the General Post Office and the Mansion House as they appeared between 1916 and 1922 (Civil War-damage and all) \u2013 was opened to the public. With tens of thousands of people visiting the film-set during this two-day period, several newspapers received letters urging the government to purchase the site as a national monument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Public fascination was not merely confined to the film\u2019s shooting locations. When the production studio issued their first open crowd-call in Rathdrum, County Wicklow, it was estimated that over 5,000 people \u2013 with period costume in hand \u2013 volunteered to feature within what they viewed as the first Ireland-meets-Hollywood historical epic. To the surprise of the film\u2019s director and producer, the public\u2019s interest was so great that many had to be turned away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was the \u2018fever running\u2019 through the Irish people to take part in this piece of history in the (re)making that the film\u2019s producer, Stephen Woolley, commented: \u2018It\u2019s absurd. It\u2019s like we\u2019re performing some service. We\u2019ve been given this ticket, this key to the city. Because it\u2019s Michael Collins, whatever we do seems okay. People just want to feel they\u2019re a small part of it. I can\u2019t tell you how exciting this is to the people of Ireland\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stephen Woolley had it right. For the people of Ireland, the production of Michael Collins <\/em>provided a valuable opportunity through which to re-explore their recent history; to re-assess, during a moment in which the guns sat still and silent, their relationship with the past; to re-ponder the questions \u2018who are we?\u2019, \u2018where are we coming from?\u2019 and, perhaps most significantly, \u2018where are we going?\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was Michael Collins<\/em>\u2019s apparent significance in this \u2018post\u2019-conflict Ireland that, when the time came for the film\u2019s release in the Republic of Ireland in November 1996, it was passed with only a parental guidance certificate, making the film available to the widest possible audience. When this controversial (because of the film\u2019s foul language and depictions of violence) decision was made public, Sheamus Smith, Ireland\u2019s official film censor, issued an important statement pronouncing that, \u2018Because of the historical significance of the film, many parents may wish to make their own decisions as to whether or not their children should see it\u2019. So significant was the film\u2019s supposed role in re-directing the country\u2019s trajectory that children \u2013 the true arbiters of Ireland\u2019s future \u2013 were recognised as an important target audience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, during a period in which progress and reconciliation seemed more important and, indeed, more possible than ever, Michael Collins <\/em>provided the people of Ireland with the chance to unite in a common purpose \u2013 that is, to assess the damage, pick up the shovel and dig through the rubble of the past to find the humanity beneath. Ultimately, with the support of Hollywood\u2019s finest \u2013 and the sense of hope, promise, glamour and spectacle that accompanied them \u2013 Neil Jordan\u2019s Michael Collins <\/em>(1996) encouraged the people of Ireland to (re)imagine their \u2018post\u2019-conflict national identity \u2013 and all this, on the global stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The featured image<\/a> has been used courtesy of a Creative Commons license.<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the final of three articles on the 100th anniversary of Michael Collins\u2019 death, Claire Smith discusses the significance of the 1996 film for ‘post-conflict’ Ireland<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2646,"featured_media":8603,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1059,1060,1063,1062],"class_list":["post-8601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics-and-democracy","tag-irish-history","tag-michael-collins","tag-michael-collins-anniversary","tag-war-of-independence"],"mb":[],"acf":{"authors":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":null,"value":null,"field":{"ID":9774,"key":"field_66d0cbf58f930","label":"Authors","name":"authors","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"relationship","value":null,"menu_order":1,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"post_type":["authors"],"post_status":["publish"],"taxonomy":"","filters":["search"],"return_format":"id","min":0,"max":10,"allow_in_bindings":0,"elements":["featured_image"],"bidirectional":0,"bidirectional_target":[],"_name":"authors","_valid":1}},"description":{"simple_value_formatted":"","value_formatted":"","value":"","field":{"ID":9776,"key":"field_66d2183027749","label":"Description","name":"description","aria-label":"","prefix":"acf","type":"wysiwyg","value":null,"menu_order":3,"instructions":"","required":0,"id":"","class":"","conditional_logic":0,"parent":9772,"wrapper":{"width":"","class":"","id":""},"default_value":"","allow_in_bindings":0,"tabs":"all","toolbar":"basic","media_upload":0,"delay":1,"_name":"description","_valid":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/76\/2022\/08\/4825636095_7b74d1225a_c.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"mfb_rest_fields":["title","jetpack_featured_media_url","jetpack_sharing_enabled","amp_enabled"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2646"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/qpol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}