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The film “Five Minutes of Heaven” explores the aftermath of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The movie involves the fictional meeting of two men whose lives were deeply altered by a 1975 murder. Anchor Marco Werman speaks with the film’s director, Oliver Hirschbeigel. Read more and watch the trailer.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman. This is The World. In 1975, Northern Ireland was right in the middle of The Troubles. Protestants and Catholics were fighting each other in the streets, and teenager Alistair Little was caught up in the violence.
LIAM NEESON: I was 14 when I joined the Tartan gangs, and I was 15 when I joined the UVF, the Ulster Volunteer Force. At that time, don’t forget there were riots in the streets every week; petrol bombs every day – and that was just in our town. And it was like we were under siege. Fathers and brothers of friends were being killed in the streets, and the feeling was we all have to do something. We’re all in this together and we all have to do something.
WERMAN: That’s actor Liam Neeson portraying Alistair Little in the new film, “5 Minutes of Heaven.” In real life, Little, a Protestant, was just 17 when he murdered another teenager, a Catholic. He shot 19-year-old James Griffin through a living-room window, as Griffin’s younger brother, Joe, watched from the street. Little served 12 years in jail for the murder. Joe Griffin’s family fell apart. His mother irrationally blamed him for his brother’s death. Alistair Little and Joe Griffin are real. The murder actually happened. But the story which unfolds in the film is imagined. Director Oliver Hirschbeigel wanted to explore what would happen if Alistair and Joe met today. This fictional meeting is what the film “5 Minutes of Heaven” is all about. Now, you Oliver Hirschbeigel, and screenwriter Guy Hillard, spent three years interviewing Little and Griffin to get their stories and their ideas on what would happen if they did actually meet. How much of their conversations are actually in the film?
OLIVER HIRSCHBEIGEL: Well, most of the dialogue you hear is really kind of original dialogue coming from the two men. And if it’s not – you know, we went back and forth between writing, changing the script, and having them read it. So there’s not a single line they say that’s not approved by both.
WERMAN: The premise behind this fictional meeting between Alistair Little and Joe Griffin is that a TV talk show has set it all up for public consumption. But as we hear in the film, Joe Griffin may have agreed to the meeting, but he isn’t totally sold on it nor is he thinking reconciliation. Let’s hear this.
GRIFFIN: A handshake? For killing my brother? For me taking the bleeding? 33 years of that. What do you think I am, a joke? If ever a man deserved a knife thrown through the nuts, that scum of the earth. Truth and reconciliation? I’m going for revenge.
WERMAN: Now, when Joe Griffin is finally escorted to meet Alistair Little, there’s a lot of things getting in the way – from Joe’s own reluctance to be a part of this to the cameraman tripping and forcing a retake of the shoot. It all seems, like a lot of television, kind of contrived. Do you think the act of truth and reconciliation is in a way forced and contrived?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: It’s one way to try to, you know, solve this problem of victim and perpetrator. But the TV people portrayed in our film, they think they’re doing something right. But the whole idea that you can forgive another person for killing your child or your mother or your father is just thinking too short. It’s even naive, in a way.
WERMAN: Are the meetings between former victims and their attackers or killers of, you know, family members, do these even happen in real life in Northern Ireland today?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: Not in that sense. I think they were trying to set up a program, and this whole idea of reconciliation as they executed it in South Africa, it didn’t really work. The concept – it’s well-meaning, but in reality, it didn’t really work, and that’s what they had to realize when they did these programs. Hence our film is not about reconciliation. It’s not about forgiveness.
WERMAN: Why did you choose to take on this project?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: I was fascinated by these two men. I read the script; I realized that I liked both characters. Plus, it’s one of the first films, if not the first one, that really shows what happens to a murderer – what a murderer goes through. What kind of pain he inflicts on himself, makes himself a lost soul. I was really fascinated by that.
WERMAN: And having met both men, did you like them? I mean, was it hard for you to think about them in the roles that they had been cast in, you know, many decades ago?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: I never spoke to them until I had finished the film. I deliberately did not want to meet them because I didn’t want to get emotionally involved.
WERMAN: And once you met them, what did you think?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: Meeting Joe, I instantly liked him. With Alistair, it was a bit more complicated. In the script, I liked him very much. But meeting him in person, meeting a murderer – and I felt like resistance within me. So I was very guarded, and I must say it’s not that I didn’t like him, but I was – it felt very strange. Neutral, in a way. It was only after the film was finished and we had shown it to Joe as well as Alistair that I really got a chance to sit down with Alistair and had long talk, like for three hours. And I must say now I really equally like them.
WERMAN: And once they saw it, do you think that their opinions of each other changed at all?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: Well, that’s what they both said. They learned in the process of developing the script and making the film and seeing the film, a lot about themselves. Alistair even went as far, in a way, he really got to know the person. In a way, he met them. And Joe has the same statement. He says, “Well, I understand more of this man now.” And the good thing is, you know, Joe has started therapy now which before was out of the question. For more than 20 years, he refused to do any of that.
WERMAN: And what do you attribute that to?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: The film – the experience of being part of this and seeing this character having a development for the better, really focus on the future, moving on — appreciating that he has two beautiful daughters and a caring wife – opened his eyes really. So I think if you ask him now – I did not deliberately – if you ask him, “Do you still want to kill the murderer of your brother?” He would say, “No.” Or at least he would not be certain anymore.
WERMAN: There’s a scene near the end of the film where Alistair Little is coming to kind of a conclusion about his role in The Troubles meant, that once he joined a group and group think came into play, there were no voices anymore telling him that killing is bad. Let’s hear the rest of his monologue.
NEESON: No one was telling me anything other than “killing is right.” It was only in prison when I heard that other voice. And the Muslims now, you know, the kids now are like I was then. They need to hear those voices now, stopping them from thinking that killing is good. They need their own people to say no. That’s where they need to hear it, and that’s where I would put my money, on making those voices heard in every mosque in the country.
WERMAN: This idea, Oliver Hirschbeigel, of looking at the troubles through the modern prism of tension between Islam and the West, was this expressed by Little when you interviewed him, or is this you speaking?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: No. That’s something we made up, but Alistair liked that very much. He completely supports that.
WERMAN: And why did you put it in?
HIRSCHBEIGEL: Because you have the problem with young people being abused for certain reasons, to do brutal, violent crimes. The reasons basically are everywhere the same. These young boys, they want to be bloody, they want to prove that they’re men. They cannot live bleak, empty lives without any perspective — so that, for them, seems to be the right thing to do. And then if there’s somebody going, “It is the right thing because of a political reason. You’re doing
something here as a soldier.” It makes even more sense for them. It’s important to point out what it really means to commit a crime – that it’s not just taking another person’s life, it’s inflicting terrible damage on the family of that victim. And on the other side, it’s terrible damage to the soul of the person who does that.
WERMAN: Oliver Hirschbeigel, the director of “5 Minutes of Heaven”, a film about truth and reconciliation in Northern Ireland, and a very powerful film at that. Thank you for talking to us about it.
HIRSCHBEIGEL: Thank you very much for having me.
WERMAN: “5 Minutes of Heaven” opens in New York next Friday. You can see a trailer for the film on our website. Just visit theworld.org.
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