Michael Collins

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be glimpsed in the painstakingly re-created destruction, carnage, and valor. Wooed by Boland and won by Collins when his friend and rival travels to America with de Valera in search of support, she serves as a device to separate the two boys and inject feeling into passions that are largely theoretical.
The character who most projects the burning, almost pathological patriotism that has fueled Irish nationalism to the
present day is Alan Rickman's de Valera. His aquiline eyes buttressed by rimless spectacles, he writhes with a
pinched, fanatic devotion to his cause. He emerges finally as the villain of the piece: envious of Collins's
popularity, power, and success, he returns from America and nearly undoes the revolution by returning to more
"honorable" conventional tactics. Jordan suggests he set up Collins to take the fall for the peace treaty and may
even have been involved in his rival's assassination.
In short, de Valera comes off as a more interesting figure than ...

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Against that saga is the humanizing picture of Collins as a private citizen falling in love and pursuing his dreams.
As a viewer of the movie and outsider, not from Ireland, I can only observe Collins as a flawed hero who could unflinchingly order his men to carry out cold-blooded murders while he desperately harbored the illusion that the violence would eventually lead to freedom and lasting peace.

During those six years Michael had been greatly influenced by his father, who encouraged his children to learn patriotic ballads and poetry. West Cork was the heartland of Fenianism, the Irish nationalist movement founded in the 19th century. Jermiah O'Donovan Rossa, ...

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