Director Declan Recks told David Hennessy about Tarrac, the new Irish language film starring Kelly Gough and Lorcan Cranitch about Naomhóg racing and family.
Tarrac, a new Irish language film starring Kelly Gough and Irish World Award winner Lorcan Cranitch, comes to Irish Film Festival London this week.
The film tells the story of Aoife Ni Bhraoin (Gough) who returns home to Kerry to help her father Brendan ‘The Bear’ O Briain (Cranitch) recover from a heart attack.
The father and daughter are distant. Day to day they get along just fine but there is a lot that has been left unsaid. Aoife has never grieved properly for her mother who died when she was just sixteen. While she is back home, Aoife gets pulled back into the competitive world of racing the Naomhóg boats that are traditional to the area.
The Naomhóg is a boat specific to Kerry. Not as well known as the Connaught Currach, it is 25 feet and four handed as opposed to the Currach’s 21 feet and 3 hands. The film’s title means ‘pull’. While this is what the women shout to each other in the boats, it can also mean the pull of home or the pull of the sea. The film was shot in Kerry and with the Dingle Pennisula in particular providing the stunning backdrops.
Back in Aoife’s teenage years, Naomhóg racing was so important to her but has been a passion she has lost in adult life. However, after reconnecting with old friends Aisling who is the local publican’s daughter and mother of three Jude, she remembers what it is like to be part of a team again. With the fourth member of the team Naomi, they attempt to win the coveted Munster cup – although they are written off in this from the start.
From Clare, Kelly Gough is a London-based actress whose screen credits include The Fall, Marcella, Broadchurch, Casualty and RTE’s Raw. She is also the younger sister of actress Denise Gough. Her racing team is played by Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Kate Finegan and Rachel Feeney.
Declan Recks has directed some revered shows on Irish television including the critically acclaimed Pure Mule which won five IFTAs including Best Director and Best Drama and is seen as something of a seminal moment in Irish television raising the bar significantly. He has also directed The Running Mate and Scúp for TG4. The Offaly film maker directed his debut feature Eden in 2008.
Tarrac was something that saw Declan combining with two frequent collaborators in the past, writer Eugene O’Brien and producer Clíona Ní Bhuachalla. Declan told The Irish World: “Myself and Clíona have worked together before and obviously myself and Eugene O’Brien have worked together a lot. Clíona is the only Gaielgeoir amongst us and obviously there’s the Cine4 scheme, which is the scheme that the film board and TG4 have together that has been making a couple of films every year.
“And Clíona said to me, ‘Maybe we’ll try and get something in there’. So we tried once or twice with a couple of ideas that didn’t quite make it and then we sat down with Eugene and sort of came up with this idea about Naomhóg racing.
“I had seen Currachs racing in Oranmore twenty years ago and thought, ‘Okay, that looks really interesting. I’ve never seen that on screen before’. And Eugene obviously was very interested in that because he’s a huge sports fan and liked the idea of a sporting movie but also the family thing, the father/daughter relationship and Clíona was terribly interested in the boats because she spent a lot of time in Dingle. I think it was all those things.
“I know for both myself and Eugene a film called Breaking Away when we were growing up in the 70s was a huge hit. It was about cyclists and I think that was always in the back of our heads: A sporting movie that’s not just about sport but about the group of people who are taking part in sport.
“We were trying to figure out a way of doing it that meant you felt you were in the boats with them and you were part of the race. I wanted it to feel like what it’s like to take part in one and in fairness to our four lead women, every one of them met months before we started shooting so they were able to row the Naomhógs.
“They all trained separately because two of them were in London, one’s in Dublin, one’s down the west, and then they came before we started shooting and really pulled together because you can train on your own or train with different people but it’s about the team and how they work together. They were great together.”
So there were no ‘rowing doubles’ or anything like that used?
“We had doubles standing by all the time. I think we used the doubles for three or four shots. The four women did pretty much everything themselves. They were great, they really committed to it because it’s hard work.
“During the weeks of prep, I went out one day with them just to see what it was like and I was exhausted after an hour and a half and they were out every day when we were shooting and they never once complained. They just went for it, but I think they enjoyed it as well. They got into it.”
As you say it’s much more than a sports movie and there is the whole relationship between Aoife and her father..
“At its heart I suppose it’s a story of a father and daughter who are dealing with grief and actually haven’t dealt with grief over the death of Aoife’s mother. They’ve managed to both bury it completely. He’s just got on with his life and she’s buried herself in work and it’s by coming back home to look after him that really raises the ghosts of the dead mother and she has to confront it.
“Then it’s through working and being with the other women in the team that she’s able to deal with it. It’s probably the first time for her and we’ve talked about this when we were writing it. And also Kelly being in the boat with the other women is probably the first real joy that she’s had in years and since her mother died, it’s complete therapy for her.
“You read about people going swimming in the ocean for therapy and this is a similar thing, I think. It’s therapy. The Naomhógs become therapy.”
Aoife certainly needed something like that. She’s a workaholic, someone who is all business, isn’t she? We see that in the film. No sooner had she joined the team then she was giving Mairead her marching orders saying she was not pulling her weight..
“Yeah, she’s very focused on her work and probably a little abrupt in how she deals with Mairead but for her, that’s just business. It’s just, ‘We want to be the best, therefore we must get rid of the dead wood’. But I don’t think that’s her completely, I think they’re things that she’s learned.
“We never go into what she does but the back story is she’s working in a corporate world that’s very cut throat and I think she brings some of that back but I think by the end of it, you feel that she’s softened a lot and she’s opened up a lot.
“Definitely when she goes down there first, she’s very cold. She’s very distant from people. And that scene with Mairead is just business. It’s just like, ‘Well we want to get on, therefore we must get the best people we can’.
“And when she focuses on that, she goes and she meets Naomi who lives with her cousin and she begins to have to get involved with community which is something she probably kept at an arm’s length for a long time.”
A lot of the film rests on Kelly’s shoulders, doesn’t it?
“It’s a lot of weight to carry but I worked with her on a show for TG4 and BBC Northern Ireland a good few years ago written by Colin Bateman called Scúp so I knew she was a really good actor.
“Kelly came in (for audition) and she just nailed it completely, I think she totally understood Aoife’s position and her grief and where she was coming from. Also when we went to shoot it, she totally committed to learning how to row as well so she’s a very focused individual, very similar actually to Aoife. She’s very focused and when she sets her mind to something, she goes for it and I think that kind of comes out in the character.”
Played by Lorcan Cranitch, ‘the Bear’ is an interesting character…
“It’s funny, I’ve worked with Eugene a lot and we would always have these characters that are floating around who may or may not make it into a film or TV show. Bear’s character has been floating around for a while.
“Originally Bear’s character was there and he was very much to the forefront and when we first thought of the story, it was very much Bear’s story as a man who’s kind of been left behind by time in that he’s very set in his ways. And by shifting the story to Aoife, Bear actually became a slightly softer character.
“Bear was definitely, as the name would suggest, a mountain of a man and he was the best at what he did and I think Lorcan does a fantastic job. Even though we never actually see him in a boat, we can tell that the boats were the most important thing to him and we see how dedicated he was to his wife and we also see he has this great skill of making his own boat.
“It’s incredible that a lot of these clubs make their own boats and they row their own boats. They make them from scratch which is again a great skill that’s kept in these communities. There’s great community spirit behind it.
“That’s what I found really interesting about the whole Naomhóg thing as well, it’s such a community endeavour and it’s great skill, a bit like Irish music or anything cultural, Naomhóg racing, or Currach racing is something that’s been handed down and handed down, I just think that’s what makes the film very rooted in the place and rooted in Dingle and obviously in the Irish language as well which is very much part of Dingle.”
Speaking of the Irish language, what has it been like to see the success of The Quiet Girl and Irish language films really come to the fore?
“I think it’s fantastic. I’m not a fluent Irish speaker. I’ve worked in Irish just because TG4 many years ago asked me to direct a show called The Running Mate and I thought, ‘Oh, I don’t know enough Irish to do that’.
“But once you get into it, you realise you actually know a lot more than you think you did because anybody who went to school in Ireland learned it from a very young age. I think it’s great for the language. TG4 have been way ahead in terms of promoting the language but also promoting Irish film.
“They had an idea which was the Cine4 scheme and I think when they set that up their aim was to get nominated in Best Foreign Language Film (for an Academy Award) and they did that.
“I think TG4 are very focused and very clear about what they want to do and very imaginative with very little money compared to our national broadcaster who probably lack the same imagination but I just think they’re a great bunch of people to work with. I really enjoyed it and delighted they’re having so much success now with Cine4.”
After Róise & Frank, Tarrac became Lorcan Cranitch’s second Irish language film. Is he getting the hang of it because we heard he was a little unsure about himself with the language? “Well Lorcan claims not to be fluent,” Declan laughs.
“But he was pretty good and anybody I’ve spoken to – because we would always have an Irish language or dialect coach on set and by the end of it, she said he could pass himself off as a local any day of the week.
“I think Lorcan has pretty good Irish but he’s also a phenomenal actor. And he’s also obviously got a very good ear because he would have had to do a very different dialect for Róise & Frank compared to what he would have done in Dingle because they’re very different dialects, completely different dialects.
“You read about people going swimming in the ocean for therapy and this is a similar thing, I think. It’s therapy. The Naomhógs become therapy.”
“I’m very lucky in that I’ve worked with Lorcan before, I’ve worked with Kelly before, I’ve worked with a lot of the cast before so that helped me because obviously I’m not a fluent Irish speaker so I trust them.
“I know they’re great actors so I can rely on them to deliver a performance and trust them to make sure that the dialect is correct or the sense of the scenes is correct because I am at a slight disadvantage. As is Eugene, because he writes in the English language. But Clíona is a fluent speaker and she worked a lot with Eugene on the script so we were very careful about when we were translating it into Irish, none of the subtext of what was being said was lost.”
Another theme seems to be that thing of getting older or watching an elder relative decline.
“I think that was something that Clíona and myself could relate to because we’ve both lost parents and I know Clíona had lost a parent quite recently. Anybody who has been in that position can see that in the story and I think it really resonates for a lot of people, grief and how people deal with it.
“Our biggest challenge with the script was to try and make the two very separate stories – the story of her dealing with her grief and the story of the boats – coincide at just the right moment which they do in the final race.
“I think that makes that moment really powerful because you know where that’s come from and it’s something we talked about – myself, Eugene and Clíona – that your grief can bury itself for years and then suddenly you’re having a cup of coffee somewhere and you’re in tears and you don’t know why.
“It just comes over you all of a sudden and it’s something that’s not really spoken about much. But everybody deals with grief in a different way, some people deal with it straight up at the time and some people bury it and in the case of Aoife, she buries it for a very long time.”
Tarrac is in UK cinemas now.
Declan Recks is at the Kiln Theatre and Cinema in Kilburn on Thursday 4 January for a special screening followed by a Q and A session. For more information, click here.
