Kneecap

Closing Party 6pm

Comedy / Drama / Music / Biography
1 hr 47 min – Rated 14A – Released 2024

Kneecap is ballsy, brave and one of the best music biopics ever made. A sweary, crude and brilliantly political Irish comedy, the headline-grabbing Belfast rap trio blend 8 Mile, Trainspotting and The Hunger into a hedonistic but heartfelt film for the ages. The film is a semi-dramatised biopic of the formation and rise of the controversial, headline-grabbing Irish language hip-hop trio, recalling how rappers Móglaí Bap and Mo Chara would write lyrics to reflect their everyday Belfast lives as well as their nights spent scoring and selling drugs or running from the police. One night, after being arrested and refusing to speak English to the police, local music teacher JJ O Dochartaigh is brought in to translate from Irish. Taking Chara’s side after discovering his lyrical prowess, the humble teacher encourages him and Bap to pursue music and offers to lay down some beats – in bid to make Irish language music relevant to a new generation and “set the dodo free”.

We observe Belfast schoolchildren standing in their classroom, singing “Óró Sé do bheatha abhaile,” a traditional Irish song, in the Irish language required in their school. They drone the lyrics, looking bored out of their minds. Two boys in the back, sharing earbuds, are pretending to sing along but are actually listening to another kind of music, hip hop, by an exciting new local trio called Kneecap. Kneecap rap in the Irish language. It isn’t something you hear every day.

The Irish language was nearly stomped out of existence. Speaking in Irish is seen by many as a political act. Kneecap was formed in 2018 amidst the controversial “discourse” surrounding Sinn Féin’s proposed Irish Language Act. The Irish Language Act would legally place Irish on the same level as English, which would include garda interrogation rooms and the courts. The “Óró Sé do bheatha abhaile” scene is a snarky representation of the various strands of dialogue at play around the Irish language. A language needs to grow in order to live; it needs to be present in the Now. A traditional song from a century ago has no relevance to the 21st-century kids singing it. But a trio of angry men screaming is another thing entirely.

One film can’t explain all of the complexities around the Irish language and its history, but Kneecap does a remarkable job laying it all out (while also making it fun). The film’s style is frenetic and propulsive, profane and provocative, peppered with jokey asides, stylistic flourishes (slow-mo, animation), and pulled along by a snarky voiceover (reminiscent of Ewan McGregor’s voiceover in Trainspotting). Having the Kneecap members play themselves was a bold choice, and it pays off. They’re engaging and unself-conscious, and professional actors like Fassbender and Kirby bring out the best in everyone. Kneecap isn’t an underdog rags-to-riches story. It’s about the right of people to say what they want to say, to criticize the power structures ruling their lives, and to create a community of opposition. And, yes, to put “BRITS OUT” on their butt cheeks. That’s free speech, too.