Song of Granite

Combining evocative dramatic recreations, archival footage, interview excerpts, and musical performances, filmmaker Pat Collins’s canny blend of narrative and documentary paints a moving, mysterious portrait of Irish sean nós singer Joe Heaney (1919-84). Shot in starkly beautiful black-and-white that gives everything a luminous but gritty glow, the film begins by depicting Heaney’s hardscrabble boyhood in the rocky landscape of Ireland’s western coast while offering a description, as well as examples, of the traditional style of solo singing that he shyly mastered. The narrative then segues into Heaney’s middle-age years, as he leaves the home country for Scotland, England, and America, where his ordinary and often ragged existence (sometimes as a doorman) is mixed with public performances—including one at the Newport Folk Festival—that earn him admiration and a degree of recognition. Finally, viewers see him as a crotchety old man looking back on his life with longing for his roots. While this outline suggests orderliness, Song of Granite is a defiantly impressionistic work, shuffling timeframes and often simply stopping for a musical interlude—either by Heaney in archival footage, or by one of the three actors (Colm Seoighe, Mícheál Ó'Chonfhaola, Macdara Ó Fátharta) playing him at various ages, or by someone else. By avoiding convention and cliché, Song of Granite becomes not merely a partial biography of Heaney but also a kind of cinematic poem celebrating ancient Irish culture. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)