I approached this film with a lot of trepidation, putting off watching it for weeks. Much
of this was down to my being uncomfortable with boxing and fist-fighting of any kind - I
just don?t enjoy watching people knocking the shit out of each other - but I was also
uncomfortable about colluding with a project in which a settled film-maker would bring a
settled audience to leer into Travellers? lives. Such fears are not unfounded by any
means. The media is full of such ?Big Fat Racist? selective framings of Travellers? lives,
served up weekly for the titillation of scoffing settled audiences. Will Ian Palmer?s 12
year labour of love prove to be different? Will he champion his subjects by turning his
camera angle to break with our society?s pervasive and racist framing of Travellers as a
problematic, and ultimately inferior culture? Or will he take the easy and well-worn path
in the way that Channel 4?s ?Gypsy Blood? did and grotesquely reframe Travellers (and
Romanies, whom it doesn?t bother to differentiate from Travellers) as uncultured monsters?
Conversations I had with people about the documentary in those weeks surprised me. Many
who I thought would be critical were not so critical. Others were critical, but not for
the reasons I thought they would be. My squeamishness was also assuaged; no, the film
isn?t all that blood thirsty, I was told, it?s perfectly watchable. The really captivating
drama is in the personalities and in the themes that pervade: pride, honour, tradition,
fairness; but the fights were ok to watch. Not too bad a film, as far as documentaries
about Travellers go, an interesting snapshot of people?s lives, a sort of record I was
told by another person, but it was ultimately exploitative of what is in a very real sense
a marginalised community, even if this exploitation was with the collusion of some of the
Travellers featured in it. Interestingly, this last person also gave me a bit of advice:
?watch out for the accommodation, you can really see a deterioration in people?s living
conditions as the film goes on?. What else does the camera capture besides bare-knuckle
fighting?
?Knuckle? is, I can say without hesitation, an absolutely captivating film, taking the
viewer into spaces largely hidden from the outside world. Here, we are much more intimate
with Traveller men than in any other film (that I have seen, anyway). As if they?ve
forgotten the camera (that is often addressed directly by some protagonists), we see
Travellers among Travellers, in all their charisma and tenderness as human beings. In
between the fights, we can feel the strength of loyalty and love among brothers, fathers,
sons, and cousins; feelings which, along with an acute sense of honour and dignity, in
this context, propel the cycle of fist-fighting contests that is the film?s subject.
Outside of the fight sequences a perceptive audience could catch a glimpse of the
generosity, genuine kindness, respect and hospitality which Travellers, men and women,
almost invariably offer each other and outsiders as well. But they might also miss it
under the torrent of Youtube challenges and clich?d (if at times positively poetic) big
talk which confirm all of our narrow assumptions about what it means to be a Traveller.
Other glimpses of what life is really like for Travellers are there too, but appear to
have been treated as even less relevant to the subject matter. Women and women?s voices
feature at best as an afterthought, as though a male narrative about a male-dominated
activity is the only one that counts.
The other thing that is striking is, as I had been told it would be, the evidence of the
deterioration in conditions on Traveller sites. The footage of the same west Dublin
halting site where the film?s main protagonist, James Quinn McDonagh, lives, shot over the
12-year period in which the film was made, traces a marked decline in conditions. This is
sadly the only evidence in the film of the larger processes that shape the drama which the
film so brilliantly captures.
Conditions for Travellers have been worsening steadily, not just since the bubble burst in
2007, but as far back as the 2002 Anti Trespass Act (the decision by local authorities to
move away from accommodating Travellers at halting sites) and, further back, into the
Irish and British States? long sordid histories of neglected rights and of the coerced
settlement of Travellers. This, as in so many films about Travellers, is the great untold
story in ?Knuckle? and more?s the pity for it not being told. Without this back-story,
there is no context for understanding the frustration and indignity which drive the plot
so fervently. Were such a context to be made explicit in the film, ?fair fights? could be
understood as an integral part of Travellers? struggle to defend their culture and set of
codes, ways which are honourable in as many ways as settled ways are honourable. Instead,
the viewer uses what s/he has available in order to make sense of the plot: the received
ideas that are fed to us daily about Travellers. The conclusion it is tempting to reach is
that there is a problem with Traveller culture and in their inability to adjust.
Lamentably, Ian Palmer?s camera has merely re-framed Charles Haughey?s ?Itinerant Problem?
albeit in a moving and captivating way.
Bron : a-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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