A review of “Kneecap”, stage and screen

Kneecap, the band, is probably best known in the U.S. for their boycott of the SXSW festival earlier this year. They were protesting the “super sponsor” status of the U.S. Army at the festival during the genocide in Gaza and were eventually joined by more than 80 bands. They are also republicans, i.e. outspoken proponents of a united Irish Republic. Their music is a mix of rave and hip hop, full of profanity, left-wing politics and drug references. About half of the lyrics are in the native Irish language, of which the band members are all fluent speakers.

The band also has just released an eponymously named movie that is well worth seeing. Funny, vibrant, gritty and deeply political without being didactic, it is a semi-autobiographical story of their unlikely rise to success. The band members play themselves and put in surprisingly solid performances as first-time actors – Mo Chara (Liam), Móglaí Bap (Naoise) and DJ Próvaí (JJ).

The tone of the movie is set early and opens during the Troubles, the civil war that played out in the North of Ireland from the late 1960s through the signing of the Good Friday Accord in 1998. This is shortly followed by Naoise’s baptism in a secret mass, which is broken up by the British military.

We next see the childhood friends Liam and Naoise learning Irish from Naoise’s highly committed republican father Arlo (played by the outstanding Michael Fassbender, who had previously portrayed Bobby Sands in the 2008 film, Hunger). As he says “every word of Irish spoken is a bullet for Irish freedom.” Shortly after, Arlo’s father begins a bombing campaign against British targets and is forced to go on the run, eventually faking his own death to avoid capture.

Liam and Naoise grow up to be ravers and drug dealers. The band comes together when Liam is picked up by the police after an underground party is raided and will only speak Irish to “the peelers” (Belfast slang for police). JJ (DJ Próvaí), an Irish language teacher is brought in as a translator. They quickly develop a bond of solidarity through the language, and JJ discovers that Liam writes expressive poetry in Irish. Liam, Naoise and JJ meet up in the coming days at JJ’s makeshift studio to put Liam’s lyrics to music during a drug-fueled montage scene.

The movie moves through the points of the band’s history. Their initial ad-hoc shows in local pubs, and their underground fame as a group that raps in Irish about working-class life in West Belfast. JJ has to hide his identity behind a tri-color balaclava to preserve both his job and his relationship with his girlfriend who is a mainstream republican politico. Liam’s story follows his romantic struggles with his protestant girlfriend, which mirrors what in the U.S. would be an interracial relationship. And Naoise attempts to maintain connection with his absent father, who can only be contacted after taking elaborate precautions to avoid police surveillance. All the while contending with threats from RRAD (Radical Republicans Against Drugs)—the name ‘Kneecap’ is slang for a gunshot to the knee, a traditional punishment for drug-dealers or informers.

The Irish language is central to the movie and the band. In the background of the movie is the campaign to make Irish an official language in what is now known as the North of Ireland. Ireland was the first colony of Great Britain, only achieving nominal independence in 1921. Before this, the Irish language was officially outlawed, along with Irish sports, dancing, and other markers of Irish culture. After the War of Independence, Great Britain forced a rotten treaty, dividing Ireland north and south, that included economic subjugation and continued colonial rule in the north which continues to this day. Irish was only made an official language in the North of Ireland in 2022. Only 10.4% of the population has “some knowledge of Irish”, and only 0.3% use Irish as their primary language. As Caitlin (Fionnuala Flagerty), JJ’s long-term partner, says, “A country without a language is only half a nation.”

The movie ends with a triumphant concert which is cut short by another police raid—the Belfast police appear to be just as brutal and bigoted as those in the U.S. But the band’s success, while a path out of poverty for Liam and Naoise, is also a trigger for renewed interest in the Irish language for both Catholic and Protestant youth. Although the band are staunch republicans, for a united Ireland without any British Rule, they stress that this does not mean that they are Catholic sectarians. As Liam said in an Irish TV interview,

“[W]e have more in common with working class people in Belfast, whatever the divide, than we do with rich people in Dublin…a worker’s revolution is the way forward rather than one based on a god that may not even exist.”

“Kneecap” is a laugh-out-loud funny movie, exuberant and inventive. It is not available for streaming yet, but is still in theaters in parts of the country. The band is touring the U.S. off their album “Fine Art” in September and October.

Featured Image credit: Diego Sideburns; modified by Tempest.

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