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MVFF T u r n i n g 3 0
Spotlight on Terry George
in the naMe oF JustiCe
By Michael Fox
Irish writer-director Terry George has a
singular gift for weaving moral dilemmas into
intensely emotional sagas. More than most
contemporary screenwriters and directors,
George’s themes are rooted in the real-world
circumstances that defined his childhood.
Growing up in belfast in the ’50s and ’60s,
he learned the importance of personal
responsibility as well as the consequences
of violence. When he began writing
screenplays, it was only natural that his focus
HotEL rWanDa
was “the troubles.” The trio of films he made
with Jim Sheridan, in the name of the Father
(which garnered the co-writers an Academy
Award ® nomination), some Mother’s son
(marking George’s directing debut; MVFF
1996) and the Boxer, rank among the most
memorable movies of the ’90s.
The Irish trilogy established George as a
master of shaping real-life drama to the
contours of a movie screen—or, more
accurately, he pulled and stretched the
screen to accommodate the complicated,
unwieldy nuances of true stories. With the
acutely shattering Hotel rwanda, George
deftly moved beyond the borders of his
native land, earning a second Oscar nod for
his screenplay, which movingly contrasted
one man’s courage with international
indifference. but Hotel rwanda was not as
great a stretch as one might imagine, he told
an interviewer: “I had a particular knowledge
of sectarian division and how that’s
manipulated, the fear that’s injected into
ordinary people from the threat of the ‘other
side.’ It’s a millionfold the story of Northern
Ireland, but the root of it is still the same:
divide and conquer, create a sense of fear
that the other person is going to rob you of
your property and possibly your life.”
The director takes another leap with
reservation road, his first film set in this
country. It is also a departure from his earlier
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work in that it is adapted from a novel, by
John burnham Schwartz. but the film is in
the same vein as George’s previous dramas,
continuing his obsession with individuals
who stubbornly refuse to accept societal,
institutional or governmental injustice. Terry
George’s movies always have a hero, though
he or she is assuredly not a superhero. His
protagonists are simply ordinary people who
are compelled beyond all logic and
reasonableness to do the right thing.
soME MotHEr’s son
George segues from history to fiction with
reservation road, and one expects (and we
hope) he will move between the two in the
future. While the lure of true stories is
irresistible for most filmmakers, George
brings them to the screen with an integrity
and seriousness of purpose that is precious
and rare. It is a responsibility that he
embraces wholeheartedly. “It’s like the
distillation of wine into brandy, almost; you
take the facts and you compress them
together to give an emotional experience, a
flavor and a taste of what went on, for an
audience. That, for me, becomes the
challenge. I do feel a big obligation to history
because, for better or worse, feature film has
become the main source of in-depth
information about big events.”
Michael Fox is a critic and journalist, and curator
and host of the Friday night CinemaLit film series
at the Mechanics’ institute in san Francisco.
seleCted FilMography
Writer-director:
reservation road (2007)
Hotel rwanda (2004)
a Bright shining Lie (TV) (1998)
some Mother’s son (1996)
Writer:
Hart’s War (2002)
the Boxer (1997)
in the name of the Father (1993)