"I've also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I've tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book"
About this Quote
Neil Jordan isn’t just adapting a book; he’s trying to smuggle a vanishing country onto the screen before it gets overwritten by the glossy, export-ready version. The phrase "fast disappearing" carries a quiet defiance: cinema as preservation, yes, but also as an argument with the present. He’s pointing to Ireland not as postcard mythology but as a lived atmosphere that newer narratives - the Celtic Tiger arc, the tourist-friendly folklore - can flatten into brand identity.
His choice of the 1980s matters. That decade in Ireland is often remembered through shorthand (recession, emigration, social conservatism, a kind of national claustrophobia), but Jordan frames it as "depressed and difficult" to justify a specific emotional palette: grayness, constraint, and the survival humor that grows in tight spaces. The subtext is that hardship isn’t a decorative backdrop; it shapes character psychology, moral compromise, and the kinds of intimacy people allow themselves. In other words, period detail is being treated as ethical detail.
"I worked really hard to find the heart of the book" is classic director-speak, but it’s doing strategic work. It signals fidelity while granting himself permission to change surfaces - plot, scenes, even tone - as long as the adaptation delivers the same emotional verdict. Jordan implies that the "heart" isn’t a storyline; it’s a wound, a cadence, a truth about a place at a particular moment. That’s how you defend an adaptation: not by copying, but by catching the ghost.
His choice of the 1980s matters. That decade in Ireland is often remembered through shorthand (recession, emigration, social conservatism, a kind of national claustrophobia), but Jordan frames it as "depressed and difficult" to justify a specific emotional palette: grayness, constraint, and the survival humor that grows in tight spaces. The subtext is that hardship isn’t a decorative backdrop; it shapes character psychology, moral compromise, and the kinds of intimacy people allow themselves. In other words, period detail is being treated as ethical detail.
"I worked really hard to find the heart of the book" is classic director-speak, but it’s doing strategic work. It signals fidelity while granting himself permission to change surfaces - plot, scenes, even tone - as long as the adaptation delivers the same emotional verdict. Jordan implies that the "heart" isn’t a storyline; it’s a wound, a cadence, a truth about a place at a particular moment. That’s how you defend an adaptation: not by copying, but by catching the ghost.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|
More Quotes by Neil
Add to List
