{"id":10582,"date":"2025-01-07T21:25:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T02:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10582"},"modified":"2025-01-07T21:25:56","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T02:25:56","slug":"kneecap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/01\/07\/kneecap\/","title":{"rendered":"Kneecap."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kneecap <\/em>tells the story, loosely, of the founding of the popular Irish-language rap trio of the same name, with the three members playing themselves. It\u2019s mostly fictional and entirely hilarious. (It\u2019s on Netflix in the U.S.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The band Kneecap has risen to significant prominence in both their native Northern Ireland and in Ireland over the last decade, but this biopic blends truth with fiction, although writer\/director Rich Peppiatt told NPR that the wilder stuff is the truth<\/a> and the \u201cmundane\u201d stuff is fabricated. The two MCs switch between Irish and English, between pro-Republican and pro-Irish language activism and rhymes about drinking and drugs, rapping over beats that draw more from the golden age of hip-hop than anything in the last 30 years of American rap. Their second album, Fine Art<\/em>, featured guest spots from Fontaines D.C. vocalist Grian Chatten and British rapper Jelani Blackman, and the song \u201c3CAG\u201d became a top 10 hit on Ireland\u2019s pop chart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kneecap<\/em>\u2019s script creates some structure around the group, from member Naoise\u2019s father being an ex-Republican paramilitary who faked his death to avoid arrest to a story about how the two rappers connected with their schoolteacher DJ. The throughline, and the real heart of the film, is the rapid, organic rise in popularity that came from their live gigs and a protest campaign that got one of their first songs played on an Irish-language radio station across the island. It has some of the trappings of classic up-from-obscurity music biopics, but avoids many of the tropes of the genre \u2013 the drug use is almost entirely comic, rather than leading to some sort of tragedy or downfall; the band doesn\u2019t break up only to come together at the end; there\u2019s a love interest that doesn\u2019t divide the band or otherwise derail them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trio\u2019s ascent has been rapid enough that the screenplay instead layers on a political story, from Naoise\u2019s father, played with brilliant understatement by Michael Fassbender, to a Northern Irish police officer who believes they\u2019re dangerous activists, to run-ins with a group called Radical Republicans Against Drugs. Nearly all of this is made up for the movie, and it\u2019s just about all funny even when there\u2019s a serious subtext like the suppression of native Irish language and culture in British-ruled Ulster. The three members of Kneecap are natural performers, to the point where I thought for much of the film that DJ Pr\u00f3va\u00ed was being played by an actor when he\u2019s just playing himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Irish Film & Television Academy submitted Kneecap<\/em> as the country\u2019s entry for this year\u2019s Academy Award for Best International Feature, and it made the December shortlist of 15 titles. Only one Irish film has ever made the final list of nominations, 2022\u2019s The Quiet Girl<\/em> (which is fantastic), but Kneecap<\/em> appears to have a real shot to become the second, and I\u2019d be thrilled if it means more people seek this movie out. It\u2019s a riot, and it\u2019s something novel \u2013 it\u2019s not a straight biopic, it\u2019s not a parody or a mockumentary, and it\u2019s about a specific culture that was mostly new to me (I mean, I\u2019ve watched Derry Girls<\/em>). And because it doesn\u2019t take itself too seriously, or seriously at all, the underlying theme of pride in one\u2019s culture and language is far more effective than it would have been if they\u2019d played it straight. It\u2019s not going to beat Emilia Perez<\/a> <\/em>for the Oscar, but it\u2019s a way better film.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kneecap tells the story, loosely, of the founding of the popular Irish-language rap trio of the same name, with the three members playing themselves. It\u2019s mostly fictional and entirely hilarious. (It\u2019s on Netflix in the U.S.) The band Kneecap has risen to significant prominence in both their native Northern Ireland and in Ireland over the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1417,1292,599,161,1431,215,648],"class_list":["post-10582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2024-movies","tag-biopics","tag-comedies","tag-highly-recommended","tag-irish-films","tag-movies","tag-potential-oscar-nominees","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10583,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10582\/revisions\/10583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}