Monster

The start of the Irish disease potato famine in 1845 reaching its peak in 1847 where millions died & millions fled, many to the Americas where they faced discrimination. This dramatization starts with a few Irish asking their English landlord not to raise the rents as the people are starving. Subsequently an adversarial relationship develops & escalates. Titled (in my opinion inaccurately) as "Monster", but in Irish "Arracht". Some of the period Irish dialogue was hard to understand; subtitling helped somewhat.

It's a historical drama about a present we are still stuck and live in. Interesting use of special effects flickering through the memories of a mourning father and taking the dark gloominess of the moss covered coast mountains. Splendid use of audio effects setting the atmosphere. Cast put up a remarkable performance with their assignments. It's a quiet story with an intriguing progression and a beautiful conclusion. A tragedy that changed the course of a country's culture is briefed and signalled well with the brief fateful encounter between the landlord and peasant. Monster is a tale of survival that has beauty worth appreciation.

The first thirty minutes of this film is very good in setting out the core of the story and the concluding ten minutes is also good. However, the middle section is a bit plodding and drags. Overall the film is well acted and very atmospheric. I saw this film at the Glasgow Film Festival.

This film has a has a great start, and a brilliant ending.

This film is based at the start of the irish famine in the 1800s, and shows just how desperate people were from starvation!

The dialogue is in irish (with English subtitles) and in English for scenes with English landlords. I think thats another reason that this film is fantastic, it's in its native tongue, which most irishmen/women spoke at the time. I'm giving this a 10/10 for its excellent cinematography, for its brilliant acting and for its historic accuracy on the famine ! A must watch.

"Colmán Sharkey" (a strong performance from Dónall Ó Héalai) lives peaceably with his wife and young son on the West Coast of Ireland. They live a pretty subsistence existence, supplementing their basic potato farming with some fishing and a thriving little poteen business. Their livelihoods become doubly blighted, however, upon the arrival of "Patsy" (Dara Devaney) - a naval deserter; and with the bug that ruins their crops. It's at this point they get a visit from the agents for the English landlord to collect the rents, so "Colmán" decides they ought to go visit the man - with whom he is on fairly reasonable terms - to renegotiate the proposed increases. It is at this meeting that "Patsy" goes a bit off piste, and carnage ensues. The film now jumps forward a few years and we find "Colmán" sleeping in a cave, living a solitary existence, surviving on fish and there is no sign of his family. What happened to him in the intervening years is relayed to us via his gradual adoption of the abandoned "Kitty" (Saise Ní Chuinn) and their struggle for survival. The story is actually pretty poignant at the beginning, and the first half hour offers us an insight into just how hand-to-mouth their lives were in the mid-19th century, but that potency falls away as we are presented with some beautiful, but rather repetitive scenery and scenes in his boat - and the pace becomes just a little too depressed. The imagery is gorgeous, sometimes bleak, and the audio is really effective too - the constant wind howling, the sea lapping - it all contributes hugely to this sensual feast of a film. The ending is too rushed, and that's a shame - but this film is still pretty stunning to look at and to listen too; though maybe a little more meat on the bones of the characterisations wouldn't have gone amiss. Try to see it on a big screen if you can.