If you were to ask Irish people in which field the island punches above its weight, a lot of people would undoubtedly say literature.
With four Nobel laureates, five Booker Prize winners and a constant flow of literary talent, there's a lot of civic pride on both sides of the border about the international impact of its poets, playwrights and authors and their best works.
Writers like Roddy Doyle, Anne Enright, Sally Rooney, Colm Tobin, Anna Burns, Conor McPherson, John Banville, John Boyne, Maggie O'Farrell, Sebastian Barry, Joseph O'Connor, Louise Kennedy, Claire Keegan and Enda Walsh are carrying on a proud tradition.
Before them, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, George Bernard Shaw, Seamus Heaney, Brian Friel, Patrick Kavanagh, John Millington Synge, WB Yeats, Brian Moore, John McGahern, John B Keane and Frank O'Connor blazed a trail.
But so did Edna O'Brien who brought an authentic female voice to an Irish literary canon that was dominated by men.
Sinead O'Shea's documentary 'Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story' celebrates that voice while examining the life of one of Ireland's most flamboyant and fiercely feminist literary greats.
An extraordinary life is celebrated thanks to contributions from Anne Enright, Louise Kennedy, Doireann Ni Ghriofa, Gabriel Byrne, Andrew O'Hagan, O'Brien's sons Sacha and Carlo Gebler and Jessie Buckley who reads extracts from her diaries.
The film serves as a final curtain call for the Co Clare writer - celebrating her ability to dream up stories and use language to expose the suppression of women and female desire which for many decades Ireland refused to confront.
O'Shea spotlights her bravery in facing down conservative, male voices in the Catholic Church, her homeland, the literary world and her own household who tried to disparage her and diminish her achievements.
Drawing also from interviews with the author towards the end of her life, it is very frank about her turbulent marriage to Ernest Gebler and the colourful life she pursued afterwards of hosting parties in London attended by film stars and pop stars, the flings she had and one particular love affair with a British MP that almost drained her of her desire to keep writing.
Stories about the hostile reaction back home in Clare to her relationship with Gebler and to the success of 'The Country Girls' cut really deep - exposing a small town mentality in a country which was in the firm grip of conservative Catholic leaders like Archbishop John Charles McQuaid.
An attempt by a priest and some family members to wrestle her away from her husband-to-be while laying low in the Isle of Man for scandalising the family is pretty disturbing - particularly the violence meted out to Gebler.
The same is true in how the film depicts Gebler's eventual hostility towards her - particularly his inability to cope with her success as a writer and his petty determination to dominate and denigrate her achievements.
O'Brien has inspired good documentaries before - most notably a 2019 BBC1 'Imagine' film with Alan Yentob which like O'Shea's draws from footage in her family archive.
In some respects, Yentob's documentary delves deeper into her upbringing and the roots of her frustration with the Church and the conservative male forces that shaped her defiant approach to writing.
Some stories, though, are worth revisiting and 'Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story' will prompt viewers scurrying back to read or re-read 'The Country Girls' trilogy, 'Night,' 'House of Splendid Isolation,' 'The Little Red Chairs' and her final work 'Girl'.
Like her previous documentaries 'A Mother Brings Her Son To Be Shot' and 'Pray For Us Sinners,' O'Shea's documentary is wonderfully constructed - intelligently edited and shot, absorbingly told and thought provoking.
If it serves an entree into the work of one of Ireland's best and endlessly fascinating literary figures, then job done. You can't get better than that.
('Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story' was released in cinemas in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland on January 31 2025 and in English, Scottish and Welsh cinemas on April 11, 2025)
THE PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE
Narrow small town perspectives run deep in German director Chris Cottam's whimsical Irish comedy 'The Problem With People'.
Working from a script by Wally Marzano-Lesnevich and the 'Mad About You' and 'Aliens' star Paul Reiser, it tells the story of Des Keogh's old man Fergus whose last wish is to unite two branches of his family that have drifted apart after settling on either side of the Atlantic.
Sensing his life his about to end, he browbeats his divorced undertaker son Colm Meaney's Ciaran into reaching out to Reiser's American cousin Barry, who is a top financier, to persuade him to visit the Irish strain of the family in their small town.
Persuaded by his daughter, Jane Levy's Natalya to go, Barry links up with his Irish relatives and Fergus who recounts the story of their Jewish roots and how both branches of the family separated.
All is hunky dory until Fergus suddenly passes away and leaves his American relative half of the family estate.
A bitter feud erupts when Ciaran tries to diddle Barry out of what is rightfully his.
All of this is meant to be light hearted froth poking fun at small mindedness in a small Irish town - except 'The Problem With People' is laughter free.
Despite the best efforts of Reiser, Meaney, Keogh, Levy, Lucianne McEvoy, Eimear Morrissey, Patrick Martins and Niall Buggy, the film lacks an authentic comic voice.
It feels very like an American vision of what Irish humour is.
Nods are paid to modern Ireland's multiculturalism and more tolerant attitudes to sex but the film is still weighed down by a lot of "sure and begorrah".
'The Problem With People' might have gotten away with playing out like a mash up of Jim Sheridan's 'The Field' with Danny de Vito's dark comedy 'War of the Roses' with a sprinkling of Bill Forsyth's 'Local Hero' on top.
However it quickly becomes clear that neither Cottam, Reiser not Marzano-Lesnevich have the bottle to tap into the spiteful, cartoonish humour that made de Vito's comedy a hoot.
Undoubtedly there have been a lot worse movies made in Ireland about the Irish by directors from outside the country.
Nevertheless this is definitely in the relegation zone - an underwhelming waste of everybody's time from the cast and crew right through to the viewer.
('The Problem With People' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on November 8, 2024 and is available for streaming in the UK and Ireland on Amazon Prime)
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