Michael Collins - About the Story...

For 700 years before Michael Collins was born, there was no peace or freedom in Ireland. Since the 12th century, English conquerers had ruled Ireland with a brutally strong hand, "planting" the country with Protestants loyal to the Crown and sitting by as the native Irish Catholics starved while the nation's grain, beef, butter and milk were exported to feed the English.
Born in a stone cottage in the late 1800s, Michael Collins came of age in the early 20th century, when a monumental history of oppression and bloodshed had divided Ireland and its people, making hatred and distrust a national heritage and a way of life. Collins vowed to bring Ireland's slavery to England to an end.
In 1916, in what became known as the Easter Uprising, Irish revolutionaries surrendered after a six-day standoff at Dublin's General Post Office to the overwhelming military power of the British forces. Of the revolutionary leaders, only Eamon De Valera, a U.S. citizen, was spared from the firing squad. Many followers, including Michael Collins and his close friend Harry Boland, were imprisoned. Upon their release, they found themselves the new leaders of the Irish independence movement.
Collins threw himself into the political and military struggle against British rule, travelling the country and gathering followers with his powerful speeches and magnetic personality. After a violent encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary, his wounds were tended by Kitty Kiernan, a young woman whose beauty and independence drew the attentions of both Collins and Boland.
Collins organized a brazen secret force -- the Irish Volunteers -- which struck from nowhere at the British army and police. The British couldn't catch Collins, who traveled around Dublin by bicycle in plain sight, marshalling his troops and arming them on a previously unprecedented scale.
So massive in commitment and passion that he was known as "the Big Fella," Collins became the military genius of the republican movement -- a living nightmare to the British and a dream come true to his countrymen. He masterminded impossible prison escapes, created vast underground intelligence networks, and outfitted his famous "invisible army" with new Thompson machine guns fresh from America. For the first time, the Irish were taking control of the centuries-old situation in their country.
The British retaliated against the new power of the Irish nationalists by sending in the Black and Tans, a brutal paramilitary force, to terrorize, torture and subdue the population. The "Tans," as they came to be known, were paid 10 shillings a day to "teach the Irish obedience." They did so in a reign of violence that included the burning down of homes and factories, torturing of prisoners and the execution of hundreds of suspects without trial. Even Collins' own mother's home was torched by the Black and Tans.
De Valera, in desperation, went to America to raise support for the Irish cause, taking Harry Boland with him. In Boland's absence, Collins and Kitty Kiernan fell in love.
When De Valera returned from the United States, he took back command of the Volunteers from Collins. But the biggest job had already been accomplished; Collins' bold tactics had succeeded in bringing the British to the breaking point.
A truce was declared and De Valera insisted that Collins lead the negotiations with the London government, despite Collins' protestations that he was a guerrilla fighter, not a political negotiator.
Collins returned from London with a treaty that established an Irish Free State but partitioned the country and required an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. The treaty was narrowly accepted by the Irish Parliament, but rejected by De Valera , who walked out with his followers, including Harry Boland.
At the time Collins wrote: "Let us not waste our energies brooding over the more we might have got. Let us look upon what we have got...Let us realize that the free Ireland obtained by the Treaty is the greatest common measure of freedom obtainable now, and the most pregnant for future development. The freedom we have got gives us scope for all that we can achieve by the most strenuous united effort of the present generation to rebuild Ireland. Can we not all join together to save the Irish ideal, freedom and unity, and to make it a reality?"
Despite Collins' pleadings for peace, civil war broke out between the opposing sides. Civil war erupted between the pro, and anti-Treaty forces, and Collins was now branded a traitor by many of his former followers.
Brother now fought brother in the streets of Ireland and the promise of peace faded away. Collins watched helplessly as the men he cared most about in the world , De Valera and Boland, fought against him as if he were a hated enemy.
Then, to Collins' horror, Boland was killed by troops of the new Free State Army. Against all advice, Collins set off to try to negotiate a cease-fire in Cork, the last bastion of the anti-Treaty forces, where he was shot and killed by an impassioned young fighter.
Collins is one of the true tragic heroes of our tumultuous century. His powerful gifts sparked the fierce battles that led to the Irish Republic that exists today, but his unshaken confidence in those gifts led him to become a victim of the very men he inspired to fight by his side.
Despite the questions surrounding his life, Collins' mark on history is undeniable. Without his effort a free Ireland may never have come to reality. And to the rest of the world, he became known as the father of guerrilla warfare, a man studied by Mao Tse-Tung and so revered by Yitzhak Shamir that Shamir used the code name "Micail" during Israel's war of independence.

A Special Note From Director Neil Jordan
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