Aoife Kelleher, director of the much-liked One Million Dubliners, has done the nation a service with this tasteful celebration of the first woman to hold the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann. Centred around a wide-ranging interview with Mary Robinson, the film catches Ireland at a cultural fulcrum. When Robinson, who recently turned 80, came to the job, gummy social conservatism still dragged at citizens’ ankles. Seven years later, as she left for the United Nations, Ireland was in the throes of a still-bewildering transformation. We get a vivid sense of that swing. The film also touches on Robinson’s time as a young lawyer and on a later dedication to fighting climate change. Future historians will find it of assistance.
Nobody could, however, call this a critical study. Unlikely talking heads such as Peter Gabriel and Richard Branson pop up to lubricate the reputation. “A strong, feisty-spirited person that goes in and fights for those who need support,” the former Genesis singer says. In its later stages the film touches on two notable embarrassments, but the gentle chastisement comes from largely friendly voices. No contributor is prepared to offer any properly penetrating digs.
We begin in Ballina, in Co Mayo, and what seems to have been a largely stable upbringing. Kelleher has accessed a wealth of home-movie footage that presses home quite how long ago the 1950s and 1960s now are. A different country, a different universe. It remains a shock to be reminded that when Mary Bourke married Nick Robinson – a support for decades to come – her parents, distressed that he was a Protestant, refused to attend the ceremony.
It then required some courage to resist the overweening stasis, but Robinson grew up looking out at the river Moy and harbouring dreams “about making life fairer”. Mrs Robinson gets at the pressures – and the excitement – of early campaigns aimed at increasing access to contraception. One yearns for a bit more of the late Nell McCafferty’s irreverence. That veteran notes her old colleague was “very polite ... saying, ‘Let’s go to court’”.
It feels as if nobody saw change coming to the presidency. To that point, the job had been a cushy number for retiring male greybeards. Robinson, then cresting 50, felt she was “too young to be president of anything”. But she accepted that this wasn’t about her and set out to embrace the North, recognise women and open the State up to the “diaspora” (not a word we’d much heard until that point). In the interview she gives good anecdote on the decision to honour the immigrant Irish with a light in Áras an Uachtaráin. Her sincerity dispels any suggestions of sentimentality.
The first of the two errors came when she decided to leave the job a few months early to take up her new position as UN high commissioner for human rights. She admits that was “a big mistake”. More than 20 years later she again courted controversy over the case of Sheikha Latifa, the daughter of Dubai’s ruler. This remains a confusing story that could have been allowed a little more room, but, again, she concedes she made mistakes.
Those hiccups set aside, the film seems happy to skirt accusations of hagiography. One need not introduce political enemies from the right to flay the reputation. (Mind you, more than a few candidates spring fleck-mouthed to mind.) But a little less unfiltered adulation in the later stages would have been welcome.
No matter. This remains a nicely made tribute to a singular figure. Hugh Rogers and Ray Harman’s score surges. Matthew Kirrane’s camera sails over picturesque countryside. The subject, still sprightly, dances with fans. There is nothing so wrong about a good-news documentary. The nation had more than enough bad news in its first century of independence.
Mrs Robinson opens in cinemas on Friday, August 23rd
