| War of the Buttons | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | John Roberts |
| Produced by | David Puttnam |
| Written by | Louis Pergaud (novel) Collin Welland |
| Starring | Gregg Fitzgerald, Colm Meaney, John Coffey, Brendan McNamara, Liam Cunningham |
| Music by | Rachel Portman |
| Cinematography | Bruno de Keyzer |
| Editing by | David Freeman |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | 1994 |
| Running time | 94 minutes |
| Country | Ireland |
| Language | English |
War of the Buttons is a 1994 Irish film directed by John Roberts, about two rival kid gangs in Ireland, the Ballys (poor), and the Carricks (rich). The setting is County Cork, where it was filmed on location.[1]
Although the film is usually classed as a drama[2][3], the tone that it chooses is frequently light and comedic, and it examines issues of war, the actions and consequences that it always carries, and how it can divide and oppose people that can be friends as easily as they can be enemies.
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The film is based on a 1912 French novel by Louis Pergaud, that was filmed in 1961 and originally brought to the screen in 1962, in the French film directed by Yves Robert La Guerre des boutons.
In the centre of the bridge over the river which separates the Irish villages of Carrickdowse and Ballydowse is a white line that few young people dare cross. That's because the youths of the two towns spend most of their time trying to one-up the other, whether it's over the sale of hospital raffle tickets or something more important, such as deciding who's a "tosspot" and who isn't, or, for that matter, defining what a tosspot is. This War of the Buttons has been going on as long as any of the youths can remember, and as far as they're concerned, it's "to the death", though rarely does either group hurt more than its pride.
The leader of the Ballys is a not-too-promising student named Fergus (Gregg Fitzgerald), son of a pauper family, who lives with his mother and an abusive man, who is apparently not his father (as he believes that somebody else had fathered Fergus), in a trailer on the edge of Ballydowd. What Fergus lacks in education he makes up for in leadership, and the youth of Ballydowd will follow him anywhere, especially a girl named Marie (Eveanna Ryan), who acts as the story's narrator, reviving her memories of what happened from her adulthood point of view. The Carricks have a leader too: Jerome, a.k.a. Geronimo (John Coffey), son of a wealthy family.
The story tracks the escalating events of the gangs' feud, their class differences (the original and main incentive for their fights), Fergus's troubles with his oppressive environment and the conflicts brought upon when the adults of the villages find out about it, as well as the conflicts within the members of the Ballys. The strategic operations of the latter ones to win the war, including a nude ambush mounted on their enemies, are shown in great detail. The groups clash in several battles, with the final one aiming to conquer the Carricks's "castle".