Week 7: Patrick's Day

Writer/Director: Terry McMahon

Seen: Friday 13th February 2015

Venue: IMC Galway

Snacks: Ben & Jerrys Chocolate Browine (an eye scalding €3.80 for a tiny tub)

Mood: WOW

There are good films, there are bad films and the there are fantastic IRISH films like ‘Patrick’s Day’. I left the cinema having seen this film quite literally blown away. In fact, it rattled around in my brain for several hours the impact is so strong.

Patrick Fitzgerald played by Moe Dunford is a man in his early 20’s suffering with severe mental health issues. He lives in a home and his doting mother Maura (Kerry Fox) takes him to see the annual St Patrick’s Day parade in Dublin City every year for his birthday. This particular year he meets Karen (Catherine Walker) and his whole world is turned upside down. Karen has her own demons to deal with and maybe sees an innocence in Patrick that she no longer possesses, but it is this very innocence that Maura is trying to protect.

This is a film about love, the right to intimacy no matter what. Yes, it’s about mental health but also sexuality,control and the stigma attached to mental health issues. As the tagline proclaims ‘Love is madness’.

Maura does what she does for love. Patrick is her whole world and when she sees that world potentially coming apart she makes a choice that makes a devastating affect on her son.

The director Terry McMahon allows us into Patricks world with brilliant use of close ups and out of focus dream like sequences. There is a jaw dropping scene in the middle of the film which is so powerful I could barely watch it.

It is no wonder this film has won so many awards so far, it swept the board at the recent Woodstock Film Festival. Moe Dunford as Patrick is just breathtaking, its not an easy role to play believably but he does so with aplomb, he is an actor to watch for sure.

In a recent interview on the Late Late Show Terry McMahon urged audiences to go and see the film as it is important for the Irish film business and to raise awareness for the subject matter.

The performances are powerful from all, the editing is outstanding and the director brings us crashing into Patrick’s world and we are left reeling.

I urge you to see this film for these reasons and to  PLEASE support Irish Cinema.