Five Minutes of Heaven Liam Neeson and James Nesbitt play two men from opposite sides of Northern Ireland's sectarian curtain, one a former teenage assassin, the other brother and passive witness to his brother's murder. They're working class lads from a small town - Lurgan has a population of less than 40,000. They're lives were destined to be spent in the routine of working in a factory and raising a family, but their lives have been perverted by their situation and by one insignificant murder ? insignificant, that is, to everyone outside their immediate families.
Now, 33 years later, they are brought together again by a television crew keen to give the murder significance by presenting this spectacle of truth and reconciliation to a receptive audience. The former assassin is, by now, well versed in his role as reformed murderer and recalcitrant advocate for peace and understanding. The bereaved brother finds himself thrust into the guise of potential celebrity victim.
The media anticipate a spectacle, the two men are consumed by their internal monologues, the teenage killer now the ageing residue of the creature he was, the witness to the killing a man imprisoned by his own nightmares.
The teenage killer was just a young lad, concerned like all young lads with his appearance, girls, music, and his pals, consumed by a desire to be somebody, to acquire status. The only status open to working class lads is the status of gunmen - the old men orchestrate the violence, the young soldiers flow off the production line of bitterness and desolate expectation. He and his pals egg one another on, professionally aware of guns and terrorist warfare at too young an age. Their heroes are gunmen, their aspiration to be gunmen.
Just an ordinary street in an ordinary little town where everybody knows everybody despite the sectarianism. Just an ordinary murder of an ordinary young man who happens to be in the wrong place and a child of his times.
The two men turn up for their meeting in suits. Working class lads only wear suits for weddings and funerals. Do the suits sanctify them, divorce them from the harsh emotions which define their lives? They're going to meet as media images, icons of their situations; the film will strip them of their individuality and cast them only as stereotypes, dressed in suits for respectability's sake. The film people are smooth and certain of their liberal tolerance, but they are manipulators, careless of their language, and ultimately careless of the two men they are filming.
Nesbitt delivers humour bitterly, gallows humour, survival humour, ironic and severe. He's known too much introspection since childhood. Histrionic, intense, an emotional prisoner of memories and recrimination. Neeson, experienced, professional media performer, trying to submerge his past in public humility. He's well rehearsed, speaking lines he knows too well, speaking them loud enough and often enough to drown out his own emotions. Where do your sympathies lie? Can you empathise with either or both?
But he makes this a universal tale, not unique to Northern Ireland. He's from a small town in a small country, but his voice could be that of any survivor from any conflict. He is playing to the audience of reason, delivering a superficial truth which the converted will hear but which the gunmen of the world will not, and which will not be allowed to infect the next generation of young soldiers.
Superb performances from two gifted actors. Neeson has great physical presence, Nesbitt's emotional grasp is so powerful. An utterly engrossing and convincing screenplay by Guy Hibbert, and an utterly superb film. If you do not shed a tear watching this, weep for yourself.
Anyone asked to name a classic of Belgian cinema can simply point to this film, a production all the more remarkable for its bargain basement provenance. Made by three film students with a budget which makes shoestrings look like a luxury, "Man Bites Dog" ("C'est arrivé près de chez vous") is proof that making a memorable movie depends more on talent and a good story than on vast amounts of capital and an over-indulgence in special effects.
Three young film makers follow the exploits of Benoit, a mass murderer and petty criminal, and document his philosophy of life and pride in the professionalism of his work. Benoit murders people, quite instrumentally, to obtain money. Or because they get in the way. He's not a 'serial' killer with a fixation about a victim type or a drive to assert himself. He's just a guy, going about his business. The murders, the crimes are shocking because they occur in such a natural setting - the killing is unheralded, unanticipated.
"I usually start the month with a postman!" Even killer's have their routines. Benoit explains his theories about robbery and murder, provides a masterclass in the disposal of bodies, expresses his concerns about the murder of children (it attracts too much media attention), and recounts his theories about why old people are better bets for robbery than the middle classes.
It is a film of quite shocking, deliberately disturbing violence, not least in the casual nature of the rape scene. Shot in naturalistic manner - black and white, hand held camera, exactly as if three young film makers are keeping a documentary diary of the crimes and lifestyle of a criminal. Made before the worst excesses of reality TV began to bite in Europe, it nevertheless anticipates the popular fascination with the mundane, and the ongoing appetite for murder and horror, and asks very real questions about the collaboration between the media and sensation.
The film crew, indeed, collaborate with Benoit and act as accessories - being shot at themselves, confronting another film crew following another criminal. The humour of the film is a pulsing vein. This is a film to be enjoyed as a satire. This is a film to be taken very, very seriously.
Benoit airs his views on women, race, housing, the elderly. He is the narrator. He moralises about life - he is a criminal, but his crimes follow a logic and adhere to his own brand of morality. He rants like a populist politician. The crew observe. The media, it seems, can give anyone a voice and make them seem important. But, of course, the media is only feeding the curiosity and appetites of an audience. Does the media pander to public tastes ... or does it create public taste?
The criminal makes no plans. He acts spontaneously. His is a life of instant gratification, a chaotic lifestyle of self-glorification made all the more marvellous by the attentions of a film crew. Benoit poses, one moment the urbane intellectual spouting poetry and philosophy, the next brutally attacking an unsuspecting victim. He's coarse, vulgar, intolerant, arrogant, a bully, utterly self-centred ... yet the film crew elevate him to the role of star. And we watch, transfixed, wondering where the tale will take us next.
A wonderful film, beautifully assembled, which poses question after question about the art (and morality) of film making. In fact, the only question it answers is the one about naming a classic of Belgian cinema. Award winning, influential, delightful, with a very funny spoof superhero trailer as one of the DVD extras, this is a highly recommended film.
Five Minutes of Heaven
Unrated
C'est arrivé près de chez vous (Man Bites Dog) (It Happened in Your Neighborhood)
NC-17
