“Every fucking story about Belfast starts like this,” intones rapper and protagonist Naoise Ó Cairealláin in voiceover as cars explode and protestors clash with soldiers in grainy footage. Happily, Kneecap has no truck with such tired tropes. The “mostly true” origin story of the titular rap trio — Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh winningly playing themselves — British-Irish writer-director Rich Peppiatt’s predominantly Irish-language feature bursts with energy, laughs, fizzy filmmaking and a big heart, but never forgets pertinent political point-making.
At its centre, Kneecap is a band origin-story, as childhood pals and drug-dealers Liam and Naoise are inspired to start rapping by local music teacher Ó Dochartaigh, who discovers Naoise’s lyrics during a police interrogation where he acts as an Irish-language translator. Because Kneecap are a real band, the music has an authenticity and vitality that fictional musical biopics rarely replicate. The drug-fuelled recording sessions are riotous, while the gigs themselves, from empty pub to big arena, are electric.
Peppiatt constantly injects cinematic bravura, with Trainspotting clearly an influence
Around these noobs going viral (which, despite its truth, still feels hokey), there is affecting stuff with Naoise’s father Arlo (Michael Fassbender, terrific in only a handful of scenes), a member of the IRA who faked his own death to avoid prison, leaving his ‘widow’ (Simone Kirby) agoraphobic and angry. Meanwhile, Liam’s conflicted relationship with the Protestant Georgia (Jessica Reynolds), who gets off on political slogans as dirty talk (“No surrender!”), is hilarious. There is also an underplayed mismatch between JJ and his partner Caitlin (Fionnuala Flaherty), whose crusade for Irish to become the official language of Northern Ireland is being undermined by Kneecap’s success. Happily, all the characters get their own satisfying arc.
Director Peppiatt constantly injects cinematic bravura, with Trainspotting clearly an influence: on-screen animated illustrations, a camera up the nose to capture a coke-snort, split screens, deepfake Gerry Adams, fast-forwarding through a brutal beating and, perhaps best of all, an inspired use of claymation to convey the effects of ketamine.
But this is not empty style. Instead, it’s put in the service of a telling portrait of ‘The Ceasefire Babies’, an ignored, disenfranchised generation who inhabit “the moment after the moment” following peace. Kneecap is ultimately a film about the importance of retaining an indigenous language, how the use of a country’s ancient native tongue is not only an act of defiance but also a way of retaining a cultural heritage and identity. That it does this without a hint of worthiness, just maximum irreverence, is what makes Kneecap such a joy.