Sound And Vision: Rich Peppiatt
In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week: Kneecap's Guilty Conscience, directed by Rich Peppiatt.
The film Kneecap has been turning heads and charming audiences this year. Director Rich Peppiatt pursued the band Kneecap incessantly, wanting to make something with them, after seeing their rise to fame. For those not in the know, Kneecap is an Irish hip hop trio from West Belfast, whose lyrics in Irish became a political lynchpin, because of their Irish Republican subjects. In the film Kneecap, which is a fictionalized account of their rise to fame, director Rich Peppiatt lets the band members play versions of themselves in their own story.
The trio of rappers are surprisingly fun and good actors, in an incendiary movie that brims with style. The film feels truly political in a way that can't really be ignored, but there's also a definite party-vibe going on: this is like Trainspotting in its depiction of drugs as the ultimate high, but without the comedown that film had.
Peppiatt peppers his film with a litany of great stylistic choices, but ultimately it comes down to the likeable characters, whose swagger and bragadagio is funny, off-putting and charming in equal measures. According to several accounts the band members felt self-aware about playing themselves, especially next to a world-famous actor like Michael Fassbender. Might that be why Peppiatt made a music video for them three years before the film proper? To ease them in, somewhat?
Because Guilty Conscience feels like a sketch for the film, in some ways: several of the stylistic hallmarks of Kneecap, the film, are here. The asscheeks with the message "Brits Out", the excessive pill-popping, the fourth-wall breaks and exaggerates lighting techniques, the balaclava that hints at the IRA, and so on. It feels like a way to test out some of the images and chemistry, and get the actors used to being on camera in a natural way.
What else helps is the simple stylistic conceit: having the rappers address their lack of a guilty conscience in a confession booth, addressing the audience as if they were the clergy, is a bit of a masterstroke. It makes the confined space a place where an array of juvenile and energetic performative ideas can be played out, like mooning the camera, brandishing a molotov cocktail, partaking in a huge amount of drugs or gesturing rudely at the audiences. These are bad boys, but they are so good at it.
The energy is here already, and Kneecap the film added a good story. The question is how authentic that story is, and Kneecap the band have been questioned for their legitimacy. But if these guys are fake, they are really damn good actors. Either way, Peppiatt knew what he had, and what he had was gold.
