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Monday, August 10, 2020

Jimmy's Hall (2014)

This watches like a love letter, an affectionate realist portrait of individuals fighting against state and religious oppression.
The story is about a man who tried to tried to create community, to bring joy to people's lives at a time of misery.  Jimmy Gralton has returned to his home in Ireland’s County Leitrim after a ten-year exile, and while away he’s been working in New York, and soaking up the culture. That culture is some of what he imparts to the community when he’s inspired to reopen a meeting hall he helped create ten years before. As it happens, it was that hall, opened during the Irish Civil War, which played a part in Jimmy’s self-imposed exile. And now that he’s back in a cozy cottage with his mother, a local legend to the kids, who, starved for both entertainment and enlightenment, beg him to reopen the hall.  The opposition comes from the church, who see it as challenging their authority over every aspect of the community, and the town government see it as a bid for socialism.  if people learn and experience things, they will be less controllable, and they want to avoid that at all cost.  You can imagine who wins, but the story is lovingly told.

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