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The easy option for RTÉ as the first anniversary of Marian Finucane’s death approached would have been to put together a conventional hagiography replete with talking heads and archival material. It is to the credit of directors Kate O’Callaghan and Patrick Farrelly that Marian (RTÉ One, 9:35 pm) is something very different.
Of course, Finucane’s legacy in broadcasting is celebrated. However, basing his story on the memories of her husband still shocked John Clarke, the documentary becomes something bigger than RTÉ paying tribute to one of their own. O’Callaghan and Farrelly, instead, offer a poignant mediation about grief and the inability to let go.
The filmmakers avoid hyperbole, whose 2011 film Nuala, about Nuala O’Faolain, was narrated by Finucane. Marian Finucane, who died on January 7 last year, was a leading journalist who worked tirelessly to expose the misogyny that ran through Irish society until the 1990s (and possibly for much longer).
However, the focus is less on Finucane herself than on the claustrophobic religiosity of the Ireland in which she grew up. The best compliment to Marian is that she makes visualization fascinating, even if, at best, she was vaguely aware of Finucane herself.
John Clarke: “I think, from time to time, that everything has been a big mistake. Photography: RTÉ
Clarke, shot in black and white, occasionally stops to light a cigarette. His face is not so much vivid as it is beaten for decades. A booming voice with a leaden accent enhances the noir-ish effect. The only thing to note is that we could have done with more information on Clarke’s background: where was he from, how did he make a living?
But speak from the heart. The Marian Finucane that emerges from his memories was bohemian and idealistic. Someone who refused to be limited by the sheltered Ireland of his youth.
Marian Finucane and John Clarke in South Africa in 2004: Photography: Kieran Slyne
Their relationship was unconventional by Irish standards. They were both married to other people when they met (Clarke with three young children). They got married in 2015 after 35 years together. And then simply have your “house in order” in case the worst happens.
The great tragedy of their lives was the death in 1990 of their daughter Sinéad from leukemia at the age of eight. Clarke reveals that she used to guard the grave and that whenever she passed it, she always made sure to say hello to Sinéad. Finucane never visited. And since his wife was buried alongside their daughter, Clarke has been unable to return. Such are the mysteries of mourning.
Pain is something Clarke has clearly yet to learn to live with. He spoke of the past 12 months as if they were fragments of someone else’s bad dream that had somehow ended up inside his head. Finucane had been in poor health in his later years. And yet it came as a shock when he died of pneumonia at the age of 69, shortly after returning from a vacation in India.
“What I think, from time to time, is that it was all a big mistake. That I was wrong, ”says Clarke. And that she will enter through the door. A nanosecond later reality appears. But there is always that presence, that feeling of someone there. And that I made a terrible mistake when I thought she was dead. “
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