The Peacemaker

Filmmaker James Demo’s documentary centers on Padraig O’Malley, a native of Ireland who has spent more than 40 years as an amateur diplomat with no formal affiliation to a government and no official portfolio to pursue in the interest of world peace. Even so, he has made significant headway in bringing together enemies in Iraq, as well as in the former Yugoslavia and South Africa. Weirdly, O’Malley began his mission by buying a bar, The Plough and Stars, in Cambridge, MA, and then using profits to fund a sometimes-drunken yet successful summit of warring forces from Northern Ireland, getting all parties involved to mingle and communicate. The location of that gathering was the bar itself, a site that looms large for O’Malley, a recovering alcoholic. Viewers see him at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, sometimes speaking in blurry abstractions, and also meet a former longtime lover of his—now a friend who has accepted that for O’Malley the work of diplomacy comes first. In fact, O’Malley says at one point that he doesn’t love anyone (he also has a grown foster daughter). An odd portrait of a conflicted man struggling to assuage global conflict, this is recommended. Aud: C, P. (T. Keogh)