Cal is a Irish motion picture, directed by Pat O’Connor and released in 1984. It stars John Lynch as Cal, Helen Mirren as Marcella and Donal McCann as Shamie. The screenplay for Cal was written by Bernard MacLaverty and based on his 1983 novel of the same name. An acclaimed writer of novellas and short stories, MacLaverty was himself born in Belfast and raised in a large Catholic family. He worked as a medical laboratory technician before returning to university in his late 30s to complete an English degree and retrain as a teacher. MacLaverty remained in Northern Ireland through the early 1970s but emigrated to Scotland in 1975. “In the beginning you could watch the Troubles on television and it was like seeing a different country”, he later said. “But by the 70s you were involved, and I hated it”.
MacLaverty’s eponymous character Cal is a young man in Belfast during the Troubles. Cal lives awkwardly with his father Shamie, the only Catholics in a Protestant neighbourhood. After losing his job at an abattoir, Cal becomes caught up in the Provisional IRA. One night he drives a car for IRA assassins who kill a man in cold blood. Cal, who is not politically minded, is troubled by this and questions both the IRA and his involvement with them. He becomes smitten with Marcella, a recently widowed librarian, and discovers that it was her husband, a Protestant policeman, killed during the raid. Seeking to atone for his actions, Cal befriends Marcella and begins working on a farm belonging to her late husband’s family. They begin a love affair, concealing it from Marcella’s in-laws, though Marcella remains unaware of Cal’s role in her husband’s death. Their relationship develops and intensifies – but the IRA is not finished with Cal yet.
Cal is an engaging if romanticised depiction of life in Northern Ireland. The Troubles provide a backdrop for the film but Cal and Marcella’s doomed romance is its centrepiece. Their unlikely relationship – and indeed most of the other relationships in Cal – are permeated and affected by Northern Ireland’s political and religious divisions. Some critics suggest Cal is too laden with stereotype and cliché. This is certainly true of its depiction of the IRA, simplistically represented by the characters of Skeffington, a political extremist, and Crilly, a violent thug. Cal is a watchable film but there are better cinematic representations of the Troubles.
© Alpha History 2017. Content on this page may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use.
This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation:
J. Llewellyn and S. Thompson, “Cal (1984)”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/northernireland/cal-1984/.