A Fanatic Heart: Geldof On Yeats (2016)

[Edgy MD]

Autumnal rocker Bob Geldof explores the life of poet/playwright (and fellow Nobel laureate) William Butler Yeats, inviting many celebrated poets, musicians, and actors to read the poems as professors discourse on the impact of Yeats on the creation of the Irish identity and the century that would follow.

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[metirish]

Where can this be streamed?

[Edgy MD]

Free on Tubi.

https://tubitv.com/movies/598337/a-fanatic-heart-geldof-on-yeats

[Edgy MD]

This was largely terrific, to my thinking, as the subject matter is wonderful — and despite it being as esoteric a thing as poetry, Yeats was truly an accessible poet.

The actors, musicians, and poets who recite the verse are an interesting mixed bag. Some are true fans, while others, even those whose are clearly owes a debt to Yeats, just mail it in. Shane MacGowan, despite having what seems like two feet and most of his legs in the grave, still has another seven years of life ahead of him. Van Morrison is so checked out that he is surprised when the poem he is asked to read ends.

Liam Neeson, on the other hand, despite his film career of recent decades being an assemblage of old-guy-takes-revenge porn, recites his pieces from memory, and briefly reminds folks that he once was an Oscar winner. Dominic West, Richard E. Grant, and Edna O'Brien are other highlights. The title comes from a line in the refrain of "Remorse for Intemperate Speech" — a Yeats poem that O'Brien used for a short story collection. The film also does a great job jumping from landscape to landscape in Ireland and London to set these pieces in the place where Yeats was when he composed them.

Where it falls short is with some of the bees in Geldof's bonnet. He has complaints seemingly left over from his teenage years — that Ireland missed out on what he saw as Yeats' vision of a modern, forward-looking state, rather than the traditional agrarian nation that De Valera idealized; that the country was born in a violent and deadly uprising that broke Yeats' heart; that the country retained so much of it's Catholic character that Geldof found to be oppressive.

All these are valid complaints of course, but if Geldof spoke with a few history and religion professors, instead of just literary ones, he might have found somebody who could walk him through these forces. And Yeats (and Geldof) are kind of stunningly naïve if they think these aspects of the character of the country are not in the poetry and drama Yeats produce.

But besides still being a punk at heart, Geldof is himself also a Nobel laureate, and many of the people he spoke to seem to find him way too monumental and intimidating to push back against.

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