THE FLATS (Alessandra Celesia, 2024)

Review by Rory Carroll

Joe McNally and his dog, Freedom

We talk a lot in the North of Ireland about trauma, and rightly so. According to research by Ulster University, prepared for the Commission for Victims and Survivors in 2015, out of the adult population of 1.5 million, 213,000 people have mental health difficulties that appeared to be directly related to The Troubles, and 60% of these people had received no treatment for these issues. 

And as understandings of trauma grow, so too do understandings of transgenerational trauma. It’s the idea that trauma can be passed down, from generation to generation, some have even tracked this back to The Potato Blight with the trauma inflicted by the starvation, colonialism and violence of the time. Areas affected by The Troubles most, would then understandably be ripe for such cases. Alessandra Celesia’s The Flats, takes a hands-on approach to actualising and exploring ideas of trauma and transgenerational trauma. 

Within the film, we mainly follow Joe McNally, a man who loves his community deeply and is followed everywhere by his dog, Freedom. Joe is haunted, like many in his area, by the trauma of The Troubles, things he experienced as a child, that no child should have to. At nine years old he lost his ‘favourite uncle’,  Cocke, in a senseless slaughter carried out by the infamous Loyalist murder gang, the Shankill Butchers. He says that at nine and a half he threw his first petrol bomb, later becoming, in his words, ‘in the heart of making, organising and throwing them.’ We meet his neighbours, Jolene Burns, a very talented aspiring singer (her work can be seen on her Tik-Tok @jolenemusic2024) and Angie Campbell, an incredible woman who has sadly passed away since the making of the film. Both are victims of domestic abuse and bond over their shared trauma inflicted at the hands of men, the two play an important part in some of the most remarkable aspects of the film. Due to the fact Alessandra spent seven years making the film, she was able to truly get to know the subjects and form more than just a simple bond, it’s clearly developed into a relationship of love and trust and that’s reflected in the performances on screen.

Front (L-R) Jolene Burns, Sean Parker, Joe McNally with Freedom the dog (Back L-R) Jolene's mum, Gerard Magee, Alessandria Celesia and Rita Overend pictured at the sold-out Belfast screening of The Flats at Docs Ireland 2024

His traumas and memories shape and guide the film. We see him talking to, Rita Overend, a Befriender working for the PIPS Charity, he shares with her the memories of his youth, Bobby Sands, his Uncle and his untimely death and Wake, the effect this had on his childhood and his mother and his grandmother. Here we feel a genuine connection, he trusts her and by extension of the camera, is trusting us. We are permitted to enter into the most personal of spaces, one usually bound by confidentiality laws, but it goes even further still.

The film’s bold approach features recreations of the events, sometimes traumatic and other times joyful, that shape Joe. As Rita tells him, he remembers ‘snapshots’, and we are allowed to pry within his memories to see these. They’re done in several different ways, in some, Joe simply experiences events again through his own eyes; In one sequence an actor lies in place of his Uncle, recreating his Wake in painstaking detail. In other instances, Joe isn’t present at all, we see a young man named Sean, playing Joe. 

In one such sequence, we see a recreation of his childhood holidays to a caravan park. Within this sequence, his neighbour Angie plays the part of his grandmother and Joelene plays the part of his mother, only adding to the depths of the affect. Other times Joe is present, directing the sequences, and instructing those involved what to do in order to correctly recreate the event. After one such scene where Angie has acted as his grandmother, he sobs in her arms, apologising to his grandmother.

This speaks to a remarkable aspect of the scene, the quality of the performances in the recreations. Angie, Joelene and Sean are fantastic actors, perhaps because of the personal and local subject matter or the nature in which it’s done, the acting contains an incredible depth, that only adds to the film.

These scenes give a sense of being an attempt at a type of therapy for Joe, the helpfulness of which perhaps isn’t always explored fully. It seems, superficially, that they often just put him right back into the depths of his trauma. Perhaps though, it’s in the reexamining of what happened as a child, through an adult’s eyes that may help Joe. 

In one touching scene, Joe takes Sean, the child playing him, fishing for frogs with nets. The two laugh and chat as Joe teaches him how to gently catch frogs without hurting them. It gives the sense that actualising Joe as a child, through Sean and allowing him to nurture and guide himself is helpful. He can literally look to a younger version of himself and show extraordinary warmth, as Joe does to Sean, ringing true, something Terrance McSweeney said, that Joe quotes, ‘It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.’

Joe McNally, Freedom the dog and Sean Parker

We’ve talked a lot about the trauma of these people, the trauma of the Troubles through the eyes of a child, or the trauma inflicted through domestic abuse, the film is in these ways deeply moving and affecting. However true to being a film made about Belfast, one minute you’re crying and the next you’re laughing. The film is truly funny, and perhaps that’ll only be felt in Belfast, because of shared laugh-in-the-face-of-adversity humour. Perhaps it was only felt in that room last night, as the subject’s neighbours, friends and family laughed along in union at darkly funny moments, it gave a sense of togetherness in the face of this overwhelming trauma and speaks to the power of the community behind this film.