Patrick’s Day
Review by Jason Coulter
8
If nothing else, Patrick’s Day will certainly
stay with you for a long time. It’s an unsettling
journey down the dark hallway of mental
health issues, but it’s a journey definitely
worth taking. It looms over you like a dark
shadow, a feeling that never quite goes away
even after viewing.
We follow Patrick, a 26 year old
schizophrenic born on Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s
a film that very quickly establishes the dark
tone that perseveres throughout.
Within the first few minutes we see Patrick
become separated from his mother at a funfair
and awkwardly end up in the arms of troubled
air hostess Karen. With the help of his
browbeaten mother, we watch helplessly as
Patrick and Karen strike up a relationship that
never quite knows how far it can go.
It’s a testament to the fantastic writing that,
despite everything that happens, we are never
given a hero or a villain. There are no black
and white characters in Patrick’s Day, we’re
simply left to make up our own minds –
4.5
something it seems filmmakers are loathe to
do nowadays. The heartbreaking thing is that
all the characters are trying to do the right
thing.
They all believe they know what’s best for
Patrick and it makes you wonder whether our
emotions can sometimes get in the way of
doing what’s right. Is the driving force of love
blinding Patrick’s mother to his real needs?
Is it selfish of Karen to grasp at the one good
thing in her life? Writer Terry McMahon
makes you think about what you would do in
these situations, and would it necessarily be
the right thing? Can there ever be a right thing
when it comes to person’s sanity?
It would have been very easy to make this
into a simple, triumph-over-the-odds, feelgood film. To make the characters onedimensional and see-through, but instead we
have been gifted a film that doesn’t shy away
from the tough decisions families face every
day when dealing with mental health.
Moe Dunford is the actor tasked with
bringing humanity to Patrick, and quite simply,
his performance is stunning.
It’s a very physical performance too, showing
that subtlety and faint gestures can show you
so much about a character. A special mention
must also go to Philip Jackson who plays
policeman John Freeman. A role so darkly
humorous that you can’t help but crack a guilty
smile from time to time.
The biggest shame is that for whatever
reason, Patrick’s Day doesn’t seem to have as
much publicity as other big Irish films of
recent years. Perhaps it doesn’t have the allstar casts that The Guard or Calvary had, and
you wonder just how much that has played a
part.
Or perhaps the dark subject matter doesn’t fit
quite so well in the mainstream media. Either
way, Patrick’s Day is a giant of a film. It
doesn’t hold your hand down this dark
hallway, and that’s what makes it so special.
One of the best Irish films of the last decade.