NORTH CIRCULAR
Luke McManus
****
“In the particular is contained the universal”
James Joyce
Running time: 85 MINS.
On a sleepy Sunday morning in Sheffield during DocFest this year, with most of the festival recovering from the open-bar of the night before, I was lucky enough to catch a near empty screening of Luke McManus’ new feature doc ‘North Circular’. Safe to say, I left feeling very smug that I’d stumbled upon this secret gem of the festival (and proceded to tell everyone so.)
Shot in black and white with a 4:3 frame, ‘North Circular’ carries us on an enchanting, dream-like journey from one end of this iconic Dublin street to the other, introducing us to the spaces, lives, stories and, most importantly, the music, that populate such a long, rich, conflicted road. McManus’ camera glides gently along the cobbles from west to east, lingering as it goes in dusty bars and abandoned houses; meandering, without ever feeling lost. Every frame is so delicately composed it could be a painting, whilst the haunting live recordings of Dublin’s cherished folk artists offer a breathtaking melancholic soundscape with which to engage with some of the darker, more troubling themes in the film. What's so mesmerising about North Circular’ is the way in which it reveals how just one street can carry so much of a city’s history and character, its beauty and its scars - of which there are many.
Still from North Circular. Photograph: Publicity image
Indeed, the layers of critical engagement hidden within this elegant collection of portraits are suggestive of a deep personal connection to this street and its politics, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that it's the doorstep of the filmmaker himself. McManus here joins the ranks of artists working in the pandemic, retracting their sphere of inspiration inwards, to a more local, familiar setting. And though at at times lethargically slow, the indulgence McManus allows his camera to delve into the rich textures of the interiors emerges as a kind of ode to the significance of physical place in generating, protecting, remembering and exposing the stories upon on which this city is built. ‘The Cobbler’ in particular, a beloved, legendary folk music pub soon to be teared down to make way of a luxury hotel - in spite of the spitted protests of its regulars - becomes the spacial anchor point of the film as we move along the map.
Here, we return to the elegiac performances of some of Dublin’s most highly regarded folk musicians, who take turns to sit in the dust filled stream of light coming through the window of the 'The Cobbler' to sing for the camera. Their lyrics carry us along the ‘North Circular’ and its many demons - from colonialism to gentrification, from homelessness to crime, and from mental ill-health to gender inequalities. “Those in power write the history. Those who struggle write the songs” quotes the filmmaker at the very start of the film, and as we travel from west to east, leaving behind the neat grandiose lawns of Phoenix Park, the songs root themselves more firmly in an elegiac tone of loss and grievance. The closing performance from Lisa O’Neill, with her rugged, unmistakable voice, places the timeless struggle of individual man against the unfeeling force of the ‘machine’, charging ceaselessly towards progress at a high human cost.
“Machine has eaten up my job
My meaning, my cause…
I miss the graft, I miss the boys
I plead for purpose in the void
Time is inward ticking tighter
I wish my load was a mountain lighter”
Lisa O'Neil, 'Rock The Machine'
McManus does not shy away from the shame this street carries, yet as O’Neill’s refrain carries us to the final stop on our 5km journey, we watch a triumphant Kellie Anne Harrington, the Irish boxer returning victorious from the Olympics, disappear around the final corner of the street, waving as crowds cheer and applaud. Perhaps we can attach some level of irony to this seemingly ill-fitting ending, or rather see it as a new chapter in the ‘North Circular’s’ many-paged tale. What we can understand, at-least, is that Harrington is simply one of the many individual lives who populate the story of this street. Almost every character we meet in this 85minute film - from the squatter living in an abandoned house full of bondage gear, to the troubled tin-whistling busker or the ex-convict revisiting Mountjoy prison - is so rich in story and experience that they could easily have filled an entire feature film. Like a book of poems, each portrait is unique and newly evocative of a certain feeling, yet is similarly part of a wider, collective meaning when viewed as a whole.
“In the particular is contained the universal” wrote Joyce, who’s spirit is deeply felt throughout the documentary. McManus was actually re-reading the Irish writer’s epic ‘Ulysses’, which turned 100 this year, and within which each new chapter brings a new protagonist, a new world. Much like McManus then, Joyce was an astute observer of the details of life, and spent much of his time hanging out on the very same corners we see on the screen in ‘North Circular’. It’s true that, at times, the film is in danger of losing it’s subtlest literary and contextual references on anyone not belonging to a D0X postcode, yet, for me at-least, it’s the characters themselves, in all their peculiar, raw, unique glory, who rescue this film from abstraction or prevention, grounding it in a more human purpose.
For any lover of Irish folk music, of Joyce, of Dublin or simply of black and white cinematography, this film is a masterpiece of sorts. For anyone else, perhaps certain individual poems in this rich and varied collection will ring more true than others lost along the way. Either way, this is a work of pure cinematic poetry that can proudly take its place in Dublin's impressive anthology; both a lyrical, symbolic, ephemeral classic, and the perfect soundscape to a street steeped in stories.
