The rap trio, Kneecap, from Northern Ireland, play themselves in this clever and uplifting film about dark times and liberation, finds Kevin Crane

Back in December, I was fortunate enough to get tickets for the ‘Gig for Gaza’ show at Brixton Academy that Paul Weller organised to raise money for Palestinian causes. It was a diverse list of good bands and performers, but the first act on were easily the ones I was most curious about: Northern Irish rap group, Kneecap. I hadn’t heard much of the music or seen this film, though the buzz around both was definitely rising. As award season has arrived, that buzz has gotten bigger, so I’m glad to report that finally catching up with them has been rewarding.

There has been no shortage of films about Northern Ireland and the legacy of the dirty war that is known in English by the euphemism ‘the Troubles’. Most of these films are inescapably pretty dark in tone, whether they are from the nationalist (Irish-identifying) community as this film is or, more rarely, from the perspective of the unionist (British-identifying) community like Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Kneecap asserts its intention to buck that trend with its opening gag: these guys aren’t afraid to talk about the conflict, but they have no intention of letting that reality just totally overshadow life. The film is put together in the suitably laid-back postmodern way: the members of the band are playing themselves in a story that blends fact and fiction, with their own songs blended in to form a soundtrack that’s also half-in and half-out of the narrative.

We are introduced to West Belfast teenagers Liam and Naoise who are out at a wild party that attracts the attention of the police. Liam doesn’t quite get away fast enough, but while being interrogated by a police officer he realises is a unionist, he comes up with a novel form of non-violent resistance: he refuses to stop talking in his native Irish language, which the detective can’t speak. This sets up the film’s inciting incident: the police force JJ, a one-time avid raver and now a jaded music teacher at an Irish-speaking school, into acting as a translator for them. He’s totally unhappy to get Liam into trouble in any case … but then realises that Liam isn’t just talking in the old language: he’s composing hip-hop lyrics in it. Thus begins the adventure, as our slightly mismatched trio bonds over a shared love of the music and a shared pride in their language.

Language of struggle

The main conflict in the film is about how language is such an inescapably politicised question in Ireland, both in the North where Irish was suppressed for so long under the unionist sectarian government, and in the republic where it has become representative of the post-independence establishment rather than something simply belonging to the people. That sounds like it could be a fairly tedious history lesson for general audiences, but the film makes it fun by showing our heroes winning a long battle of wits against bigoted cops, paramilitary stick-in-the-muds and narrow-minded media bosses on both sides of the British-imposed border. It’s three cool guys staging a fight for freedom with the power of rap and good vibes.

One of the main goals that this film, and the band more generally, set out to achieve was to show that the Irish language does not have to be a dead specimen in a glass case, like the dodo as JJ puts it. Suitably for a metafictional narrative, their victory in the film has leaked into real life. Irish-language teachers through the island are reporting a surge of interest from younger people wanting to refresh their ability to speak it, or even learn it completely from scratch, and this is being labelled the ‘the Kneecap Effect’. This movie is clearly connecting with a much wider audience than just people who feel a connection to that particular issue: much like the band’s songs, this is a film that tackles dark themes and a traumatic past, but by expressing an ability to overcome those things with an optimism and energy that is both engaging and infectious. The spirit of liberation the film embodies is a universal one and I really would challenge anyone to watch Kneecap and not have a good feeling coming away from it.