Some Mother's Son

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Some Mother's Son Denis Mortell/Castle Rock

In 1981 Northern Ireland, a mother faces the heart-wrenching decision of whether to let her son die for his cause. Kathleen Quigley (Mirren), once fiercly apolitical, finds herself in the middle of the Troubles after British police invade her home on Christmas day and arrest her son, Gerard (Gillen), for involvement in an I.R.A. bombing. The film focuses on the hunger strike led by Bobby Sands (Lynch) in which 10 protestors, including Sands, died. Their nonviolent protests were triggered by Margaret Thatcher's decision to have imprisoned I.R.A. soldiers classified as criminals rather than political prisoners. Gerard participates in the strike, and when he slips into a coma, Kathleen has the legal right to have him force-fed. She finds a friend in Annie Higgins (Flanagan), who also has a son near death. While Kathleen battles spiritually and morally with her son's fate, Higgins respects her son's wishes, no matter how painful the result. Some Mother's Son is a loose sequel to 1993's In the Name of the Father. While the earlier film pretended an objectivity, Some Mother's Son openly portrays the British government as a brutally oppressive regime. Moving but profoundly sad.