Review of Bloody Sunday (2002) by Cain 7 — 15 Apr 2007

There's a lot of blame to go 'round for the Troubles. There are, for example, a lot of bloody fools who go around making martyrs to one side to even the score for martyrs to the other. Goddess knows Maggie Thatcher (the children's milk snatcher) has her share of blame--and yours, and mine, and quite a few other people's. She's got a [i]lot[/i] of blame, though she cannot carry the blame for the events of this film. (Horribly, this is one of [i]three[/i] Bloody Sundays in Irish Occupation history.) The Prime Minister of the time was Edward Heath, who continued in office for some time.

Even the peaceful organizers of the march of that fateful day must bear some blame. Yes. They were intending to stage a peaceful march. However, they were attempting to stage a peaceful march in a horribly violent time--and it was, after all, illegal, though I frankly think that's an untenable law and one that [i]ought[/i] to be violated.

And then there's those soldiers, who pretty much across the board fired on people who were unarmed, people who were waving white handkerchiefs, people who were actively running away. There is some eyewitness testimony from people who are not those soldiers that there was at least one armed person who was even actually firing on the soldiers, but in a moment of grim irony, there is no evidence that the soldiers so much as noticed him, and he was not one of the wounded, much less one of the dead.

This film shows us quite a few perspectives on this event. It primarily shows us the Irish perspective, but a film released within three days of this one (which I will get to someday) showed the English perspective. (I have a lot of British friends who get awfully snippy when I use the adjective "English" to describe residents of that island nation. However, when it comes to Ireland, the problems go back long enough so that it really is England that the problem is with; Elizabeth I was sending troops into Ireland nearly 450 years ago.) Besides, the English perspective has been covered by the official version of events. This film and the U2 song are small atonement for the lost lives.