Middletown (2006) Online

Brian Kirk's debut feature is a beautifully constructed, strikingly shot Gothic thriller that has about it the whiff of ancient tragedy.

With classic simplicity the story focuses on a conflict between two brothers, a clash of values and faith that speaks to our own polarised world. As is suggested by its name, the town of the title could be anywhere in rural Ireland of the fifties, a rain-sodden, debilitating, grey knot of streets offering little in the way of hope. The church, which dominates the town as much as the pub, has been led for as long as anyone can remember by Reverend Cray (Mick Lally), a meek, gentle person who, as the film begins, passes the baton onto the incoming minister, Gabriel Hunter (Mathew MacFadyen).

Middletown is Gabriel's home, he is returning from a long absence to bring the word of god to his father Bill (Gerard McSorley) and brother Jim (Daniel Mays). What he finds here ignites a spark of righteous fury and indignation; his brother has shacked up with a woman who runs the tavern, in his eyes a den of iniquity and a malign influence on the impressionable townsfolk. Spurred on by this aberration, he vows to cleanse the populace of vice and sin, at whatever cost, a moral quest at potentially violent odds with his brother's secular choice of life.

This is taut, lean film-making without an ounce of fat on its windswept bones. Daragh Carville's measured screenplay builds on the initial premise, tightening the tension screws, until the finale reveals him to be a writer with the courage of his convictions. The chilly sense of time of place created by Kirk, the fine performances he has drawn from his actors, and the austere photography from Adam Suschitzky, which does beautiful things with the colour grey, combine to create an absorbing film whose message on the dangers of religious fundamentalism holds much currency. – David O Mahony (Dublin Event Guide)

(There are Spoilers) Far more disturbing then Robert Mitchum's psychotic & homicidal religious lunatic Harry Powell in the 1955 suspense thriller "Night of the Hunter" Matthew MacFadye's fanatical Protestant minister the right Reverend Gabriel Hunter is in a class, or padded-room, all by himself.

Having been away from the Northern Ireland town of Middletown for 15 years studying for the ministry Gabe, or Gaberial as he insists to be addressed as, comes back home as the towns new minister to replace the retired Reverend Cray, Mick Lally. Right away Reverand Hunter gets to work on the townspeople lambasting them, with threats of eternal damnation, for not following the words of Christ.

With a fanatical zeal Reverend Hunter takes it upon himself to straighten out his flock by first forcing them to pay, during church services, for the upkeep of the towns dilapidated Abbey and then goes out on his own to shut down Middletown's recreation hall. It's there where the people eat drink and participate, by gambling, in blood spattering and deadly cock-fights.

You first notice how disingenuous Reverend Hunter is when after, by almost single-handedly tearing the place apart, stopping a cock-fight he then takes one of the fighting cocks and rips it's head off to the shock and astonishment of those in the audience there! If Reverend Hunter cared so much for the abused and helpless cocks why would he viciously kill one of them himself just to make a point!

It's when the Reverend sees that his hard working brother Jim or Jimbo, played to perfection by Daniel Mayes, pregnant wife Caroline, Eva Birthistle, isn't that crazy about his wild and hellfire sermons that he starts to get to work on her. Reverend Hunters constant intrusiveness into Caroline's life turns her not only off to him but the church, or religion, that he represents! It's when Caroline sick and tired of her brother-in-laws, Reverend Hunter, attempt to run both her and her husband's lives tells him to go, now this really hits home, straight to blazes that he then incites the entire town on her. The righteous Reverend Hunter starts a campaign of terror against Caroline accusing, from the pulpit, her and her husband Jimbo, who backs his wife up against his crazy brother, of being in league with the Devil himself!

To really stick it to the crazed religious fanatic Caroline even refuses to have her soon to be born child baptized by Reverend Hunter. This was the last straw for the now totally off-the-wall holier then thou Reverend Hunter who not only has Caroline and her husbands business, auto mechanic shop & town pub, boycotted by the fired up townspeople but even goes a step farther!

****SPOILER ALERT**** Reverend Gabriel Hunter gets his and Jimbo's guilt-ridden father Mr. Bill Hunter, Gerard McSorley, to leave everything to him in his will by hounding the poor and sick old man into thinking that he'll buy himself a place in heaven for doing it. It's not that much later in the movie that the Reverend Hunters plans to off the old man, his own father!, when he finally comes to his senses and is about to rewrite his will. Mister Bill plans to leave everything to not only Jimbo and Caroline but his now new born granddaughter leaving the shocked and disappointed Reverend Hunter with nothing more that a tank of hot air to supplement his fire and brimstone harangues in church.

Shocking ending with Reverend Hunter, if he didn't already, go off the deep end committing crimes that will damn his soul for all eternity. It was even more revealing to see how insane Reverend Hunter got when he in a last desperate act of repentance actually begged his shocked brother Jimbo to commit an act, on the Reverend, that will guarantee his eternal damnation! Luckily for both Jimbo and his deranged brother Gaberial he, following what the Bible tells him, didn't go through with it!

For a country that has produced some of the world's finest dramatists and has such a rich musical heritage it has always been a source of bewilderment to me why so much of Ireland's home-grown cinema has been so appalling. Perhaps because, by its very nature, those talented in the field of Irish cinema have been quick to abandon their native shore for careers in Britain or America, (Colin Farrell is a recent case in point), and that the really successful Irish directors that have continued to work in Ireland and with Irish subjects have made their films with international money and an eye on the international market. I am thinking particularly of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan who alternate between films with an Irish setting and projects filmed abroad.

"Middletown", however, is very much an Irish film even if two of its principal actors are English. It's certainly well-made of its kind and might have bucked the trend that Irish films aren't really very good; (Paddy Breathnach's "I Went Down", written by the brilliant young playwright Conor McPherson, is a crucial exception). Unfortunately this tale of fundamentalism set in a fictitious Irish town, presumably in the North of Ireland judging by the accents, (Mid-Ulster Bible-Belt, if you ask me), and presumably in the recent past, (the fifties? the sixties?), is so over-the-top that it really is quite ridiculous.

Nothing in the film rings true and you can't help feeling it's writer, Daragh Carville, has been strongly influenced by Flannery O'Connor and that the whole thing might have made more sense had it been set in the American bible-belt and not in Ireland where even the most extreme Protestant fundamentalist was never quite as loony as this. It's all meant be to be grim in a grand guignol kind of way and it certainly is, though I was more prone to giggles than frisson's at the right Reverand Matthew Macfayden's antics. He has the Ulster accent off pat and there is nothing wrong with his acting or indeed that of Daniel Mays as his brother, Gerard McSorley as his father or Eva Birthistle as Mays' wife but the script is so appallingly derivative that good acting can do nothing to save the film. So rather than a step up the ladder for Irish cinema "Middletown" is, I'm afraid, just another nail in its coffin.

The film is visually stunning: from the dusty interior of the church with the lighted stove, through the drizzly street and the run-down garage to the blaze that is the climax of the film. It also has a wonderful sense of time, both 1950's (the film's opening) and 1960's. All of the performances are top-class, especially Mathew MacFadyen as the psychotic preacher and Gerard McSorley as the father who finds his own intolerance terrifyingly magnified by his son. What a pity, then, that the story is so ridiculous. For a start, in concentrating on the relationship between Gabriel (McFadyen) and his family, it utterly fails to show how he has managed to hold so much influence on the community. In the church, we see five or six of the main characters at the front, and another two or three at the back, but the rest of the congregation might as well be mannequins: they show no sign of hearing him, heeding him or dissenting from him; at the cockfight, nobody says yea or nay when he disrupts the proceedings, but neither does anybody applaud or condemn when Caroline throws a pint over him; a situation that results in a stone thrown through the pub window is mysteriously resolved by the onset of labour pains. Secondly, Middletown (which isn't actually a town, but a tiny village) seems to lack some essential services, such as police and fire service: murder can only be dealt with by a family member with a crowbar; residents watch an inferno that threatens to engulf the whole town as though they were at the cinema. For that matter, everyday things such as telephones and newspapers are conspicuously absent, the rural community is strangely devoid of farm animals or wheat-fields, and most puzzling of all for a 'typical' North of Ireland setting, there is only one Christian community - not even a couple of Anglicans to season the mix. Even if you're willing to suspend disbelief, the story itself is pretty threadbare, a pale imitation of an A.J. Cronin melodrama. And the music? Well, it's beautiful for the first two minutes, but when the same four chords are repeated non-stop for 90 minutes it gets more than a little irritating. My advice: watch this with the sound off.

This was supposed to be set in the "Bible Belt" of Northern Ireland. Well, as someone who grew up there,and was a child in the era depicted in the film it just didn't ring true! The accents were all over the place - anything but County Antrim/Derry. The church didn't resemble any I have ever seen. "The Church of God" is a pentecostal denomination but the one in the film was certainly not pentecostal! The elderly minister at the beginning was dressed in the robes of the Church of Ireland (Anglican)- and no C.of I. would call itself "The Church of God". The minister was often addressed as "Reverend" - they may do that in some parts of the world but I never heard it when I lived in that area. Ministers were addressed as "Mr ......"

This film was very badly researched and cast - fairly typical of Irish cinema - annoying! A film can have a great plot, but if it doesn't look authentic, it is rubbish.

An interesting take on the classic battle between church and congregation, and also in the classic way of thinking the best thoughts backfire, especially when you groom someone into being fit to a role, here as a priest, which turns out to be more of a devil.

In a poor Irish town called Middletown in the sixties a young boy, Gabriel, is chosen by the priest and the father to be the next reverend of the congregation. When the boy 15 years later comes back as a priest, he is immediately clashing with all of the greedy, playful and sinful things happening around in his congregation. His family and brother is caught right in the middle, running the town pub serving the devil's liquor.

It's dark, gloomy, poor and tragic in a stylish way. I liked the tone of this Gothic style film. It has a tension which is a plus, and it also starts interesting. I really like one of the times here; grooming a small boy into becoming an enemy of his own breed of people. You need to love a gloomy Gothic wife to enjoy this. Otherwise it will might be to sad and depressing.

The first Tim I saw this I wasn't too keen on the music. I though if was often too loud in the mixing, and a bit misfit to the stuations, and that different music would have helped the story a lot. The second and third time I saw I it, I thought completely opposite. I think the music is great, and catching the theme and situations fabulously. Tragic music, in a classic style, to make the tension the film makers really want to do. Why is the dialects, accents if you like, so different between brothers and family. The ending might also be a question to many. See for yourself.

This is TV-director Brian Kirk's first feature film, and also this has a TV-feeling about it. It's what I would say filmed in a TV-style. However, I loved the score. I've heard it, or something very similar in another film, but it's very well fitted of this tragedy.

I thought of a old Norewgian saying when watching this, translated into this in English: "When trash comes to honor, it doesn't know how to act."

Once again, the posters lied to me.

The marketing of this flick was deeply at odds with the content; 'explosive'? When I read the synopsis for this movie, I was expecting to see a townful of grotesques, every man-jack of them bloodshot and bloated by alcohol, peppered by heroin needles and bent double with chronic masturbation; into such a "den of vice" would come the clean-shaven hero, shining Gabriel. Instead, the movie was the complete opposite of what I was led to expect.

The first few minutes of the film showed us that Middletown is a simple little place full of poor people doing the best they can, whether fiddling a little to make ends meet, drinking to forget the pain, or watching cock-fighting (chickens, not penises) to while away the boredom. In other words, the townspeople were desperately ordinary.

The only (deliberate?) grotesque in the piece was Gabriel, the brainwashed Presbyterian preacher played by Macfadyen, whose face is built in such a way as to suggest a permanent air of bewildered fury. If I were kind, I would suggest that the Paisleyite rantings of the preacher were a witty comment designed to make us despise Gabriel and his faith. Unfortunately, Brian Kirk is so inept a film-maker that you quickly despise everyone in the movie, leaving the audience to fret their way through eighty-plus minutes of dark, hackneyed tedium. My only respite from this waste of celluloid was a game of "guess the accent" broken up with rounds of "spot the location." Are we surprised that Gaybo ends up stealing his brother's child and suffocating his father? Of course not; he's a bible-bashing preacher and therefore psychotic. All the townspeople stand around looking shocked at the end of the movie, but I suspect that they've just realised what a turkey they've put their names to.

The Northern Ireland Film and Television Commission have a budget to spend, but there are better projects than this feeble enterprise. The only kind thing I can say in favour of this movie is that it has managed to replace "Superman Returns" as the worst film of 2006; one hell of an achievement.

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