Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Buddy is a young boy on the cusp of adolescence, whose life is filled with familial love, childhood hijinks, and a blossoming romance. Yet, with his beloved hometown caught up in increasing turmoil, his family faces a momentous choice: hope the conflict will pass or leave everything they know behind for a new life.
Belfast is elevated significantly by its performances — Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, and especially Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds deliver deeply felt work — and by Haris Zambarloukos's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, which gives the film a poetic, memory-washed quality. The autobiographical coming-of-age plot is warmly observed but follows a fairly familiar structure, with episodic vignettes that don't always cohere into a fully satisfying dramatic arc. The film's voice is distinctly Kenneth Branagh's own, lending it some novelty, but the semi-autobiographical childhood-during-conflict genre has well-trodden precedents. The ending, while emotionally resonant, arrives somewhat abruptly and leans on sentiment over resolution.