FILM OF THE WEEK: The Sparrow

Mullingar native Michael Kinirons is best known for co-writing the screenplay for the 2015 film Strangerland starring Nicole Kidman, Joseph Fiennes and Hugo Weaving. Strangerland focused on a family wracked by grief and disconnection; themes that also lay the groundwork for Kiniron’s debut directorial feature, The Sparrow.

Set in West Cork, that is captured in its wild and chilly glory, Ollie West plays Kevin, a sensitive 16 year old who spends his days smoking, joyriding his brother’s quad bike and quietly mourning his mother, whose death a few years ago revealed she was having an affair. The complicated grief has caused Ollie’s army veteran father Larry (David O’Hara) to become an anger-driven brute, enraged by even the mention of his wife, let alone Kevin’s habit of wearing her old lipstick, which sends Larry into a disturbed rage. Kevin’ popular big brother Robbie (the ever-excellent Éanna Hardwicke) has become the perfect son to his father; getting accepted into the Cadets, echoing his father’s hatred of his mother, and sometimes viciously policing Kevin’s sensitivity, even though he still displays some of the tenderness and warmth that obviously defined this family in happier times. Kevin, it’s clear, is too like his mother for the other men’s comfort, and he feels their rejection deeply.

Kevin’s fear of being rejected by everyone supposed to love him means that when a girl he has a crush on fancies Robbie instead, he takes it badly, and his rash teenage emotions lead to a catastrophic event. Instead of admitting to it, Kevin shuts down, desperate not to lose even more than he already has. So begins an exploration of grief, guilt, and how silence can infect a family, festering like an infection.

The performances are all powerful, with O’Hara capturing how Kevin exists in a liminal space of age and innocence; having suffered too much to young to relate to his peers, but still being young enough that fear trumps accountability. He is in desperate need of love and acceptance, and O’Hara shows us a man that doesn’t know how to offer it without opening up the floodgates of grief, vulnerability and shame that he’s been repressing since his wife’s death.

Richard Kendrick’s cinematography captures West Cork’s eerie beauty as well as highlighting the small, isolated world that Kevin feels so trapped by. Kinirons’ direction is assured though the plot feels a little predictable in an Irish film landscape that is increasingly exploring young Irish men’s experiences of masculinity, expectation and emotion (What Richard Did, Lakelands, Michael Inside, God’s Creatures.) The screenplay also occasionally veers into cliché (the titular bird metaphor included). But the performances; and insight into how trauma and ideas of toxic masculinity trickles through generations, families, communities; and the affecting portrayal of the paralysing nature of grief and guilt mean The Sparrow is well worth a cinema visit, and marks Kinirons as a director to watch.