it's sometimes valuable to have stories where you know you can see where we are which is a
big modern you know in many ways very successful city and see where we come from and listen to
some of those stories uh uh that are important to retail lest we forget we all have a story to tell
but what makes each one different is not how the story ends but rather the place where it begins
it's taken 50 years to write it because a cardinal northern irish thing is to get above yourself is
to consider that your so-called problems or your particular issues are of interest to anybody else
about yourself um i began to write this because i i got past that and thought well no i think that
there are sort of universal scenarios in here that um that you know are part of a perhaps a necessary
or a helpful process that goes way beyond sort of naval gazing and i've been really touched by the
way in which when the film is played elsewhere in the world people have said to me that's my story
this is people in africa people in the middle east sometimes you get something very particular
and it does have a sort of universal resonance because the particulars feel very authentic
and when i started sending the script around that was what was so rewarding to feel everybody got
it and people commented on the fact that they just felt the the beat by beaten character by character
they somehow recognized an authenticity that was that was very familiar to them my math says if we
went across the water they wouldn't understand the way we talk if they can't understand you
then they're not listed you know who you are don't you the idea of a nine-year-old's perspective
sometimes physical perspective on what he is seeing or hearing and the way in which memory and
a very irish sort of notion i think of it anyway was something to let this as it were naive point
of view emerge picasso said it took me a year or two to learn how to paint but it took me a whole
lifetime to learn how to paint like a child and in a sense this idea of re-examining childlike
but not childish wonder and appreciation was to do with finding that point of view and especially and
this is maybe a childlike thing as well was now as a 61 year old filmmaker um is was to
listen to your instinct and just not censor it so if you you know you've now got so much experience
and you have the life experience as well if you if your gut is telling you that you you know you want
to be low on the ground behind jamie dornan's back as he stands at the door facing out the villain
with a massive belfast sky behind him it doesn't really make literal sense but that's how the boy's
experiencing it his father has to be a mountain against the elemental forces of the world that
are crowding in on their little homestead in this kind of impressionist western in his own
mind then then follow that instinct and do it and ultimately it will all will all add up don't
try and second guess the audience let it come more directly out of your gut that's what i tried to do
a boy of great presence a wonderful capacity for listening and because we knew that we would
often play scenes on his face but with other people talking his capacity to allow the story
to write itself on his features beat by beat to be fascinated by why catholics go to confession or is
billy clanton asking him to deliver things for him that he shouldn't or what's happening between his
parents you know um and and worrying about it and in fact uh one of the things i feel is touching is
you see across the course of the film and we more or less shot it in chronological order this sense
of you know what the film's partly about which is the crossover between a period of innocence
or youthfulness into that adult world where you start to anticipate or worry or start to ruminate
and there's a shock as his father is leaving once again early in the morning to go to england we go
back to find him in his bed there's just a look in the eye where it's so heartbreaking to see how
the shoulders have started to feel the burden of what it is sometimes to grow up and accept another
thing i think it ended up becoming what the film is about i didn't really realize it at the time
but it is is about loss whether it's the the loss of your home the loss of a country the loss of
your accent the loss of you know a family and as a way of life and ultimately also the loss of loved
ones which is one of the things we all have to you know deal with in life and and he starts to to
sense that and when he's on a sofa screaming his parents i don't want to go to england you know he
could as easily be saying i don't want to grow up i don't want to know that life is full of all this
stuff that's going to trip me up why can't we just get back out into that street without barricades
and let me play with my catholic neighbour and kick a ball about and for life to be all okay
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