A Terrible Beauty... is a great docudrama about a little known period in history. At Easter in 1916, while their fellow Englishmen were fighting in the trenches of France and Belgium, the badly trained Second Battalion of the Nottingham and Derby Regiment (known as The Sherwood Foresters) and the South Staffordshire Regiment were sent to Dublin to squash the Irish rebellion for independence.
The film is told with help from first-hand accounts of the British soldiers, Irish volunteers, and Dublin citizens who survived, as well as family members and historians. It contains the usual talking heads and narration, both nicely balanced with well produced and acted recreations of the events.
The usual futility of war is highlighted throughout the film and made even worse that the event – and people who died during it - have been forgotten. The names of those who were killed in Dublin where condescendingly listed as having “died on the home-front” and not part of The Great War they all thought they had signed up for.
We get to hear stories from both sides. Ned Daly and others fighting for the Irish were expected to be pushovers by the English sending over their naive soldiers, but they turned out to be much more prepared and much better trained - the whole event was an important stage in the eventual partition of Ireland in 1921.
Writer/Director Keith Farrell and Producer Dave Farrell are a father and son team who will be attending the screenings in Nottingham. They have created a balanced and gripping film here, which deserves an audience, as this part of history - so close to home - has not had much of one thus far.
A Terrible Beauty will be showing at Broadway Cinema on Monday 26 - Tuesday 27 May 2014.
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