Kneecap review - Irish Republican rappers for real

A few recent documentaries have challenged the definition of the genre through the cheerful and wholesale dramatic reconstruction of past events, key moments that weren’t captured by a camera at the time.

This is unnerving to those of us brought up on old-school public broadcast TV where the rule was that even when what the director had put on screen was obviously a reenactment, a caption indicating "dramatic reconstruction" was obligatory. Not only did that mealy-mouthed phrase clutter the image, no matter which arty font was used, it also broke the viewer’s full engagement with the moment, dragging the essential artifice of filmmaking (particularly editing) into the spotlight.

Rich Peppiatt has no such problems with Kneecap, an exuberant whirlwind of a documentary that races through the evolution of the eponymous Belfast rap trio. The band members play themselves throughout and do an excellent job as actors in their own life-story. There’s some professional thespian help from the likes of Michael Fassbender, Josie Walker, and Simone Kirby, but the film’s real stars are the three bandmates.

We meet Liam Óg and Naoise Ó Caireállain as disaffected students at the back of a West Belfast class-room. It’s 2017 and they’re covertly listening to rap while the class sings a traditional Irish folk song. Rather than treating the Irish language as a dusty artefact of interest only to archivists, the two lads know it was suppressed during the British occupation. They set out to give the language a new life. 

Their first recorded song, "C.E.A.R.T.A."  (the Irish word for Rights) was banned from the radio but became a hit. Adopting stage names – Mo Chara and Móglaí Bap – the twosome team up with JJ Ó Dochartaigh, a music teacher with a passion for the Irish language and a rudimentary recording studio in his garage. He pulls on a woolly balaclava to become DJ Próvai. It’s the birth of Kneecap, soon beloved on the festival circuit for their rousing, energetic shows and acerbic lyrics that make no bones of the band’s politics or their pleasure in drug use.

Peppiatt recreates the gig where DJ Próvai mooned with the Irish for "Brits Out" scrawled on his naked buttocks. There’s humour, too – love across the divide leads to comic sex scenes with Jessica Reynolds playing Liam Óg’s girlfriend; the couple turn each other on with political insults.

A song dedicated to their mums shows the band’s tender side, while Fassbender’s turn as Naoise Ó Caireállain’s father, a Republican paramilitary who faked his own death and went on the run, adds a darker edge. The real Gerry Adams pops up in a dream sequence and there’s no attempt to soft-soap the violence that played out during the Troubles. (Pictured above: Naoise Ó Caireállain, Michael Fassbender)

Kneecap shows the influence of Trainspotting (the use of a voiceover, adrenalised editing, and fervent drug-taking) as well as the Eminem biopic 8 Mile, but without that film's whiff of earnestness. Peppiatt has crafted a gem of a film by playing fast and loose with documentary conventions and injecting surreal humour alongside the militant politics. Kneecap should appeal to anyone with an interest in Northern Ireland's culture as well as anyone who enjoys a bit of a craic.

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