Word: irelands
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Writing in 1926, ten years after the Easter Rebellion, O'Casey can answer these questions, because he can see Ireland's causes in a harsh historical glare. His characters uselessly throw away their lives in a meaningless fight, meaningless because of their empty motivation. Afraid to admit its own fear and surrender at the barricades, the Irish Citizen Army faces overwhelming British forces, and falls...
...references that seem self-indulgent. Her sister is flying to Peking, the author mentions several times without explanation. There is a playwright named Jonah, a son, a marriage, all mentioned with verbal nudges and eyebrow lifting, none comprehensible to the reader or relevant to Killorglin. There are friends in Ireland whose portraits are washed in far too thinly for a book that at times appears to be a memoir in the act of becoming a novel. The last impression the book leaves is of a richly emotional letter from someone the reader does not know to someone else...
When, at the end, the narrator takes over completely, the film very nearly dissolves into fantasy. After scenes of Ireland's pleasant countryside, there are pictures of Kennedy's family; the austere background music of the first hour is replaced by a twinkling Irish ballad. There is the inevitable comparison with Lincoln (he alone "sits unmoved" as the procession passes by) and there are shots of the eternal flame ("the torch has been passed"). As the curtain closes, the narrator says that "Kennedy is invisible, but so is peace, and so are love and dreams...
...Switches from color to black and white break the monotony. The scenes of Kennedy are well-chosen and some of his best speeches have been included. There are some beautiful shots of the earth taken from Glenn's space capsule, some humorous scenes of Kennedy on his visit to Ireland, and a few snatches of Kennedy...
When Casement was found guilty, a clamor rose from Ireland, the U.S. and even Britain that he be reprieved. But the prosecution had a weapon of great power: the "black diaries" said to have been found in a trunk Casement left behind in his old London lodgings...