BROKEN LAND (CAL)

CAL

Sometimes, it's fun to revisit an old film from your youth.

In this case, it's Pat O'Connor's sobering Northern Ireland romance 'Cal' which has been restored 41 years after it was released when the Troubles were still raging.

Starring John Lynch and Helen Mirren and adapted by the author Bernard MacLaverty from his own novel, it has been restored and re-released in the UK and Ireland, thanks to Film Hub NI - a community cinema organisation.

Believing it to be a significant milestone in the development of Northern Irish cinema, Film Hub NI's revival reveals it to be a surprisingly effective movie which is not without its flaws.

Lynch plays Cal McCluskey, the son of Donal McCann's abattoir worker Seamie in a rural Mid Ulster town.

Cal is involved in the IRA, driving Stevan Rimkus' Crilly to a local farmhouse where his colleague  murders an off-duty Royal Ulster Constabulary officer and wounds the victim's elderly father.

A year later, Cal comes across the police officer's widow, Mirren's Marcella in the town's library where she has landed a job and he quickly becomes fixated with her.

When he's not trying to catch her eye while wrestling with the guilt of having been involved in the death of her husband, Cal is trying to find work while living under threat with Seamie on a loyalist housing estate.

Seamie and his son regularly receive threats from the Ulster Volunteer Force that they'll be burnt out of their home for being the only Catholics in a predominantly Protestant housing estate.

Seamie is determined, though, to resist the intimidation - although the real reason for this becomes clearer later in the film.

At one stage in O'Connor's movie, Cal is assaulted by a gang of loyalist youths but still Seamie won't budge.

While he and his father stand firm, away from home Cal manages to break the ice with Marcella and soon finds himself chopping wood and picking spuds on the farm where she lives with her in-laws and her daughter.

However with John Kavanagh's local IRA bigwig Skeffington and Crilly on his case about taking part in more operations, can Cal focus on Marcella and develop a romantic connection?

Or will the truth about his involvement in her husband's killing eventually spill out?

Filmed in the Republic of Ireland because Northern Ireland was considered as too risky to film in at the time, 'Cal' is a sombre tale of haunted souls trying to break free of their past.

Lynch's Cal is the film's most imprisoned character.

Wanting out of the IRA, Skeffington and Crilly won't let him go.

Cal is ensnared by romantic obsession laced with guilt over his role in the shooting of Marcella's husband.

Marcella is trapped too - a Catholic who married a Protestant police officer, she is desperate to escape the suffocating atmosphere of her in-laws' home, where the health struggles of her father-in-law are a constant reminder of what happened to her husband.

Surrounded by neighbours who want to drive him and his son out of their home because of their religion, Seamie is cornered by intolerance and prevented from wriggling free by his own stubbornness.

Lynch and Mirren make excellent leads - the former in his breakthrough role making full use of his haunted, hangdog expression, the latter nailing the Northern Irish accent and conveying the loneliness of an RUC widow.

Less convincing is John Kavanagh's local IRA leader and Rimkus, whose parts reek of one dimension.

Nevertheless, there's much to enjoy in this restoration from Catherine Gibson's no nonsense mother-in-law Mrs Morton to Mark Knopfler's evocative score which features fellow Dire Straits member John Islley on bass, Irish folk rock legend Paul Brady on tin whistle and uilleann piper Liam O'Flynn.

Polish cinematographer Jerzy Zielinski finds a rugged beauty in the rain sodden Irish countryside while Michael Bradsell's film editing shows flourishes of imagination as the film depicts the flashbacks Cal suffers throughout the film.

The eye is drawn to some of the period details in this restoration from the Martin McGuinness election posters on lampposts in one republican neighbourhood to the posters of The Police and Van Morrison on Cal's bedroom wall to the large boxes of cornflakes in Marcella's grocery box to the bland billboard ads in the local town for Harp Lager.

Arguably, though, the two performances that really stand out are supporting roles.

Donegal born Ray McAnally is superb as a local Orangeman Cyril Dunlop who Seamie despises but who expressed fondness for Cal's father.

A bundle of contradictions, he drives Cal to the Morton farm to work and tells his passenger there's "bad bastards on both sides" of the divide while shockingly muttering at one stage about Irish republicans that sometimes he thinks "Hitler had the right idea".

The other standout performance is Donal McCann's as a father worn down by circumstance.

Seamie's character's disintegration onscreen is one of the most potent depictions of male mental health decline in British and Irish cinema.

Both performances ram home how much McAnally's death by heart attack in 1989 at the age of 63 and McCann's 10 years later at the age of 56 from pancreatic cancer prematurely robbed cinema of two of Ireland's most skilful character actors.

Some viewers will be struck by how Cal's obsession with Marcella is reminiscent of James Stewart's character John "Scottie" Ferguson's pursuit of Kim Novak's Judy Barton in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo'.

And while some may be drawn in by the romance, others will find Cal's obsession with Marcella borderline creepy given the way he insinuates himself into her life and also a family whose son he helped kill.

There's no doubt O'Connor's film remains haunting to this day - especially in a society like Northern Ireland's which is still trying to shed the shackles of its past and where other forms of intolerance are now raising their head.

Forty one years on, its message remains as bleak.

Sometimes love just can't conquer all.

('Cal' was originally released in the UK and Ireland on October 4, 1984 and was re-released in a restoration on June 13, 2025)