Some movies are miracles simply for existing, warts and all. And Jimmy's Hall is certainly among them, in excavating a past that those who control the world with money and military might, would rather be forgotten.
Directed by Ken Loach, this biopic dramatically recounts the suppression and politically motivated persecution of Irish communist activist Jimmy Gralton, however ideologically timid and vague, during the suffering and uprisings of the Great Depression years. And the only person ever deported and driven into exile for his ideology, by Ireland. And yes, you probably never heard of him, whether in Ireland or this country. Buried history alert.
And apparently the Red Scare persecutions, with left activists imprisoned or driven to suicide or into exile, wasn't only taking place in the United States back then. With Gralton targeted in Ireland by the landed gentry in league with the Catholic Church. Gralton emigrated to the United States in 1909, but returned to Ireland to fight in the Irish War of Independence and again in 1932. Where he led the Revolutionary Workers Group in Leitrim, a predecessor of the Communist Party of Ireland.
Gralton originally departed from Ireland for the United States, an itinerant docker, sailor, and miner engaged in the mass struggles against joblessness and poverty in New York City where he becomes a US citizen. Though this key inspiration and political education in Gralton's life is unfortunately missing in action from the film.
Barry Ward as Gralton returns to Ireland to reestablish on his family's small farm land, the cultural and educational hall of the title. Which soon leads to butting heads with the priests and landlords alike, known angrily among the rural Irish population there as 'the masters and the pastors.'
There are inspiring socio-political episodes throughout Jimmy's Hall, as relevant today as back then pertaining to popular struggle everywhere. - though with too much emphasis proportionately on romantic and local entertainment interludes - of an occupy movement that was apparently in full swing in rural Ireland a century before Occupy Wall Street. As the poor were routinely evicted and driven from their homes and farms by the landed gentry supported by the Church - and these reactionary forces of oppression confronted vividly in the film, by a mass re-occupy land recovery movement.
Following Gralton's deportation, he was never allowed to return to Ireland. But he continued to struggle in mass movements in the US, never giving up hope in the triumph of the people, until he died in Bellevue in 1945.
Jimmy's Hall is a feature of the Tribeca Film Festival, and will open theatrically in July. More information about the Tribeca FF is online at: Tribecafilm.com.
Prairie Miller
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