The Hanging Gale (1995)

The Hanging Gale, a 1995 British miniseries filmed in County Donegal, is the only movie ever made about the Great Famine. According to The Irish in Film:

This miniseries is the only feature film to deal with the 'Great Hunger.' Between 1845 and 1847 blight hit Ireland's potato crop basically eliminating the staple food of the poor. Let me remind the reader that, at the time of the potato famine, Ireland was the breadbasket of the British Empire, shipping food around the world. Tenant farmers grew potatoes for themselves and cash crops to pay the rents on their farms. The people starved because rents were so high there was little of the food they grew to feed themselves. When they found that rents for tenant farmers in England were half that of those in Ireland, unrest spread through the land. The tenants tried begging, cajoling, threatening and murdering the landlords, but there were just too many others willing to take over the farms and try to make the rent. Forced from their land, over a million died of fever or starvation. Another million emigrated. 

The term "hanging gale", according to the DVD Review, refers to

the system whereby tenants were allowed to delay payment of their rent for upto 6 months, this of course ensured they were permanently in debt with no real sense of security, the landlords also craftily allowed the tenants to pay part of their rent in crops but of course this had disastrous consequences in the 1840's.

The epic stars the four McGann brothers playing the four Phelan brothers, one of whom is a priest, Father Liam. Father Liam tries to hold his parish together while confronting the landlord's agent and writing to The Times about the starving Irish. It is a magnificent portrait of a true shepherd being faithful amid death and chaos. For The Hanging Gale is a film which does not mitigate the truth of the tragic, sordid and unnecessary events which led to a partial genocide of the Irish people. In the words of Lynne Truss of The Times:

I was right about The Hanging Gale (BBC1). "Things will get worse," I predicted, and by jiminy they did. Towards the end of last night's final episode of this excellent Irish potato famine drama, the toll of misery, tragedy and waste was having the same effect as the later novels of Thomas Hardy heaping great paving slabs onto your stoically braced sensibilities until finally a feather is laid on the burden and you crack. 

Maeve Phelan (Fiona Victory) had lost husband, parents, father-in-law, brother, home and livelihood, but it was only when her little son succumbed to the pestilence that the waterworks spouted in this house. "Forgive me for letting you die," she pleaded with his little corpse. At which point I struck the board and cried "No more!" The suffering, the injustice The Hanging Gale was not about laughs, certainly. Against a cinematic background of cliffs and strands, each of the four upstanding Phelan brothers (played by the four famous McGanns) chose a different policy against oppression: Liam, the priest, believed in reasoning with the English landlords and The Times; Daniel believed in vengeance and terrorism; Sean believed in passive tenantry; and Con believed in raising money for food by risking his life in stick-fights. Naturally, none of these beliefs was vindicated by the unfolding events, and Allan Cubitt's epic script left all the brothers either dead, or empty shells, or cheerlessly embarked for America. 

Meanwhile the improbably enlightened English agent played by Michael Kitchen continued to operate with Christ-like forbearance, and was finally shot dead in the arms of the Irish servant, Mary (Tina Kellegher). Kitchen's performance hollow, gentle, lonely was superb. Ever since his role in To Play the King, Kitchen unavoidably brings a little bit of the Prince of Wales to all his roles: the selfless man with his hands tied; the sad man nobody can reach. In The Buccaneers he attempted cool vindictiveness, and I didn't much believe it. No, Townsend was a terrific role for him. On receiving a death-threat, Townsend hands the letter straight to Mary, explaining that she may be in danger too. The crisis of conscience this brings to Mary the enemy within means that the quiet scenes inside the house were always quite as big as anything raging outside.

The sorrows shown in this film are almost beyond tears, as in the scene of the old couple, turned out of their home for not being to make the rent, hobbling down the road to nowhere. The shots of starving children, of mass grave sites, of families begging in the street (while the English land agent enjoys his beef stew) are not for the fainthearted. Against the breathtaking coast of Donegal a tragedy more piercing than anything Shakespeare or Sophocles could devise is played out with chilling realism. One can understand how so many turned to the violence of revolution as a solution to the dehumanizing conditions. Nevertheless, Father Liam keeps the Faith and his commitment to peace. The final scene shows him walking alone on the beach between the glowering cliffs and the raging sea, with the infinite sky above him, and the viewer knows that only God is forever.


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