In this golden age of home viewing, the Criterion Collection still provides some of the best editions of the best movies ever released, usually with a rich selection of extras and often including audio commentaries (a feature they pioneered, and perhaps the greatest gift ever to film students and cinephiles alike). This column features one Criterion release per week, based entirely on where my interests lead me.
When Neil Jordan’s 1992 film The Crying Game opened in New York City, two things about it were remarkable. First, theaters running it were constantly sold out, quite a feat in the days when going to the movies meant buying your tickets in person from the box office. Second, even people who hadn’t seen it knew there was a big twist toward the end of the film, but the notoriously gabby New York public and press kept their lips zipped about what it was.
I’m disappointed to have since learned that the “don’t give away the secret” campaign was a Miramax publicity stunt, since I played along like everyone else, not knowing what we know today about Harvey Weinstein. However, this film is far more than a single gimmick and lends itself well to repeat viewings, as does another film which was marketed with a similar request: Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Still, in case 34 years later there’s still anyone out there who doesn’t know (making them the equivalent of Noel Coward’s proverbial three old ladies in Brighton who were unaware of his sexual preference), I’m going to honor the tradition of silence.
The Crying Game is a film of two halves: the first is set in Northern Ireland, the second in London. The two halves are held together primarily through the character of Fergus (Stephen Rea), a volunteer in a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) unit. In the first half, he takes part in the capture of a British soldier, Jody (Forest Whitaker), who they hope to exchange for an IRA member who was captured by the British. The clock is ticking because if the IRA prisoner is not released in three days, Jody will be executed.
Fergus at first seems to be just as hard as the other IRA members, including Jude (Miranda Richardson) and Peter (Adrian Dunbar), true believers who don’t waver in their convictions or their actions. The group makes the mistake of assigning Fergus to guard the prisoner, and he makes the mistake of removing Jody’s hood (which looks pretty much like the hoods placed on prisoners held in Abu Ghraib) and engaging him in conversation. These choices lead to Fergus coming to see Jody as a human being rather than a mere object of exchange, which leads to a comically horrifying end to part one.
You can’t just leaves the IRA the way you might cancel a gym membership, so Fergus flees to London where he becomes just another Mick working in construction. He’s also having some complicated thoughts and confusing fantasies which leads him to honor Jody’s almost-deathbed request that Fergus check in on his sweetheart Dil (Jaye Davidson), a hairdresser in London.
People born after 1998 may be thinking IR-what? at this point because their lifetime doesn’t overlap with the period euphemistically called “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. That was emphatically not the case in 1992, particularly in the British Isles, where there seemed to be no end in sight for the violence between the Unionists (Protestants who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom) and the Irish Nationalists (Catholics who regarded the northern six counties as part of the Republic of Ireland). Both sides had paramilitaries, bombings and other guerilla actions were regular occurrences, and the conflict constituted the longest deployment ever for the British Army: from the Battle of the Bogside in Derry in 1969 to the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998. Over 3,500 people died in the conflict, many of them civilians, with thousands more injured and many families displaced.
Neil Jordan did not have an easy time getting funding for The Crying Game, and several offers fell through after he refused to make changes in the script and casting. Production proceeded in fits and starts, with the low budget stretched through means such as costume designer Sandy Powell lending some of her clothing to Davidson. Jordan did make one compromise with the screenplay, filming a different ending than he originally wrote, but was able to prevail on the money guys to fund him to shoot the ending he wanted as well, and that version was included in the released film. Notably, the only Oscar won by The Crying Game, out of six nominations, went to Jordan for Best Original Screenplay.
The cinematography by Ian Wilson is often evocative in ways you don’t process the first time around, beginning with the carefully framed opening shot panning across a tatty carnival which continues in a Hitchcock-like camera glide into a medium shot of Jody and Jude at the ring toss booth. A key scene about 60% in recalls the pivotal moment in another Hitchcock film, Vertigo. Another thing to ponder is the selection of popular songs featured on the soundtrack: why, for instance, why would a movie about the IRA (as it was often characterized in Britain) open with “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge? | Sarah Boslaugh
Spine #: 1320
Technical details: 112 min.; color; screen ratio 2.39:1 ; English.
Edition reviewed: Blu-ray (1 disc).
Extras: Audio commentary by Neil Jordan; video interviews with Jordan and Stephen Rea; 2005 making-up documentary; alternate endings with commentary by Jordan. The Criterion web site mentions a CD booklet with essays by Tasha Robinson and Willow Catelyn Maclay, but it was missing from the library edition I reviewed.
Fun Fact: Neil Jordan began his career as a fiction writer and in 1979 son the Guardian Fiction Prize for his short story collection Night in Tunisia.
Fun Fact #2: Stephen Rea was born in Belfast to a Protestant but non-religious family and at the time of making this movie was married to Dolours Price, an IRA member who served eight years in prison for her role in the 1973 Old Bailey bombing.
Parting Thought: The Crying Game was criticized in some circles for “humanizing terrorists” (particular Fergus) but is it ever possible to make a movie about people without humanizing your central characters?
