Dir. Ian Palmer, UK/Ireland, 2011, 97 mins
Cast: Big Joe Joyce, Michael Quinn
Review by Matthew Rodgers
Reality TV is, or was, popular because people love voyeuristic conflict. It’s like looking over the fence as the neighbours squabble. Documentary maker Ian Palmer has decided to thrust a different kind of feud in the viewer’s face by charting the ongoing and somewhat tedious relationship between warring Irish traveller factions; the Joyces and the Quinn-McDonaghs.
At logger-heads for nearly three decades, they don’t discuss their issues with measured contemplation. Instead they bash seven shades out of each other with their titular weapons.
In what’s turning out to be a stellar year for big-screen documentaries – Senna, Project NIM – Knuckle doesn’t disappoint. Palmer’s account was ten years in the making and is admittedly brutal at times. But the violence soon numbs the viewers’ senses through repetition and it ultimately becomes a brilliant character study of the men and women at the centre of this war.
The fights in secret locations exist because the groups believe that it’s the “best way to sort things out” and they can make a little bit of extra money through the event. But it’s the retrospective afterthoughts that pique the interest.
Most of the participants are reluctant to take part in the fights; in fact the head honchos allow the other family members to fight in their honour. But for either to back down would be tantamount to defeat and the goading videos don’t help either. It’s truly astonishing to think that this medieval way of settling an argument still exists in this small community.
The point of the doc is never really clear, as attempts to wash away the blood and get to the core of the feud prove largely fruitless, mainly due to the opposing accounts of years of turmoil in a “he said this” and “he said that” manner.
It’s the overriding and ultimately depressing feeling of sadness that bruises the psyche most after watching Knuckle. Grandfathers limply smack each other in the street, whilst discouraged kids watch on mimicking their actions, indicating that despite the reflective regret of some of the travellers, this could go on for years to come.
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