Lord Kilmichael: I love this country.

Conneely: What's left of it.
Lord Kilmichael: The peasants are all the same. No appreciation of beauty.

Conneely: Beauty would be held in much higher regard, Sir, if it could be eaten.
[First Lines]

Hannah: No excuse tonight. It was your accomplices.

Red: I have no accomplices.

Hannah: Oh. I found the guns. If you don't cooperate, they'll charge you with treason. And I'm not nterested in seeing you punished unnecessarily. I sympathise with the Young Irelanders.

Red: No, you don't. You're a puppet of the crown.

Hannah: A subject. Loyal subject.

Red: So feck off back home to England then.

Hannah: I prefer it here, Mr McCormack, I find it challenging. There is no place harder to get someone to tell the truth.

Red: Or does England not want you anymore?
Conneely: [Voice over, speaking English over Irish language narration] In the year of 1845 a terrible famine descended upon Ireland. Within a few short years one in four of our people would be gone forever. Fled to England and North America. Or dead from starvation and fever. Irishmen who had enlisted to fight for the occupying British crown in its foreign wars returned home to find only death and destruction in every corner of the land. Seen by many as traitors to their own people, they looked on helplessly as their country continued to choke under the rule of the British Empire.
Feeney: [when a gun aimed at him at close range fails to fire] Damp day. You should have kept your powder dry.
Conneely: The body belongs to Beartla O'Naughton. Rent collector for Lord Kilmichael. Somebody came into his house and killed him. An unexpected end for the pig but... he'll be ate all the same.
Pope: "For whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap." Drunkenness and fecklessness is the economics of the famine in the west.

Reporter on train: And the continued crop failure.

Pope: Failure, sir, lies in the character of the people.
Pope: Explain your total dependence upon the easiest grown staple known to mankind.

Reporter on train: Potato was the only way to feed so many over limited acreage.

Pope: Food for the contented slave, not the hardy and the brave.
Hannah: He pulled me out of an ambush. Just outside of Kabul. I thought I was finished. He was the best soldier I ever met. He never fought for the Queen though, just for his mates. Fucking Irish.
Feeney: They sent *you* to get rid of me?

Hannah: Yeah. They can't afford to have one of their own, someone they called a hero, turn against them.

Feeney: They never called me a hero. Only you. I was just your faithful Mick.
Feeney: If I kill a man they call it murder. If they do it, they call it war.
Conneely: [refusing to be dismissed from Pope's services as translater] I beg your pardon, Captain, but after all this trouble I'd like to witness the tale's conclusion first-hand that it might be accurately retold in the future.
Hobson: Everyone's dying of hunger and they're putting food on a boat.
Lord Kilmichael: When I inherited this estate from my father it was practically bankrupt. To clear the land was the only solution. Consolidate the holdings, graze not grow, reduce this ridiculous tax that I must pay per occupant. I don't need them, I don't want them, why should I pay for them? This potato business has simplified matters considerably.
Lord Kilmichael: There are those who look forward to the day when a Celtic Irishman is as rare in Ireland as a Red Indian in Manhattan.
Conneely: [telling a joke to Lord Kilmichael] The farmer goes into the bath and he sees the old squire straddling his eldest daughter. Well, he's furious and he lets out a shout. "For God sake, Mary! Arch your back like a good girl and keep the gentleman's balls out of the muck."
Feeney: [Speaks in Irish]

Lord Kilmichael: I don't understand that aboriginal nonsense. Speak English, man!
[Last Lines]

Feeney: They'll come for you now.

Hannah: Yeah.

Feeney: Don't fight them. Go to America.
Lord Kilmichael: Speaking of beauty. This one could almost be English. Her hair. Her skin, fine bosom. Certainly head and shoulders above any of the miserable hags on the estate.

Conneely: Take the prettiest English maiden, put her for one season in an Irish cabin. Feed her water and potato, dress her in rags and make her wade though bogs and sleep with the family pig. Take from her any hope that the future will be different and when she crawls out of her hovel, stretching out her scrawny hand for a penny, how much will she look like that pretty English maiden?

Black '47 Quotes

Extended Reading

Black '47 short comments

Marcel 2022-04-20 09:02:59

The whole film is very desolate. If you think it's a cool movie like two men fighting for 300 rounds, you're looking for the wrong place. Although the theme is revenge, the pace is really, really slow. Knowing what the director wants to express so slowly, Hugo Weaving's temperament is really British, almost forgetting he is Australian
Janiya 2022-04-15 08:01:01

The soldiers who laid down the colonial empire for the United Kingdom finally chose to turn their guns on the land of Ireland, because although the ruthless system can bring land and benefits, it is not popular. /Regional issues, it always feels like a distant story and can't be substituted. Maybe the old man in Ireland will be very cool to see it / 6.6