When punk rock ruled over Ulster

Reviewed: Good Vibrations.

Good Vibrations tells three stories. One is the story of Terri Hooley, the one-eyed “godfather of Irish punk” who set about the restoration of Belfast’s youth culture in the early 1970s. In the film, Hooley (Richard Dormer) opens a record shop, founds a label, struggles with money and neglects his pregnant wife, played by Jodie Whittaker. He is determined to live by his instincts and forget about The Troubles. In the process he introduces the world to Ulster’s finest punk bands – Rudi, The Outcasts and The Undertones – and gives John Peel his favourite song: “Teenage Kicks”.

And this is the second story: the music born out of that moment, how it attempted to reanimate a static generation with little to hope for. The film captures the energy magnificently. There is a scene in which Hooley, who has so far been peddling folk, blues and rock ‘n’ roll, follows a safety-pinned adolescent to a gig in a working men’s club, and finally gets punk. It’s blissful. One of my biggest movie bugbears is the aggressive fading-out of background noise and fading-in of studio silence perceptible before a musical number. Not here. The soundtrack weaves naturally and ceaselessly into the plot, and the loudness, shock and presence of the band in the room will be recognisable to anyone who’s ever been to a DIY gig in a function room or church hall. Hooley’s damascene awakening is euphoric.

The film possesses the qualities of an aging rocker’s scrapbook. Archive footage, annotation and Gondry-esque interludes patch together the scene building montages and intimate biographical moments between Hooley and his family. Dylan Moran makes an appearance (little more than a cameo, though worth every second) as a weary landlord whose empty bar is festooned in mesh and surveillance equipment. It demands a few poetic liscences, quick jumps through time, anachronistic references and a slightly triumphalist ending – but all are forgivable. Above all it is hilarious, sincere and heartfelt.

The third story that the movie tells, it’s not-so-hidden backdrop, is one we know all too well: the segregation, poverty, violence and vigilantism that fragmented Northern Ireland from the 1960s on. Hooley stares them all down, as the man who inspired the film continues to do. In October last year the real Terri Hooley (who appears briefly in the film as an out of tune accordionist) was attacked while out walking his dog. “Fenian lover,” they scowled at him. “You’re a disgrace to the Protestant community.” Good Vibrations opens Belfast up to a new point of view. It refuses any notion of “sides”. The bars, streets and venues are not seen looking in, as in the news, but from the inside looking out.