In Hollywood, as in war, truth is often the first casualty. Stories told on screen demand heroes, devils and a clear plot line. Real life, on the other hand, tends to get messy—the lines between good and bad often cross. Two years ago, director Oliver Stone was severely criticized in the press for playing fast and loose with certain facts in JFK. Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father has largely escaped such criticism in the U.S., but only because Americans are unfamiliar with the story it is based on.In Britain,where people have lived with the case of the Guildford Four for 20 years,the film's reception has been considerably stormier.
The movie tells the tale of Gerry Conlon,who along with three other youths was falsely accused of killing five people in a 1974 I.R.A.bombing of two pubs in Guildford,England.The four—three men and a woman—served 14 years in prison before their convictions（定罪）were overturned. Seven friends and relatives of Conlon's (the Maguire Seven),including his father,also served many years on false charges of having made the bombs.
Though Sheridan never set out to make a documentary,he has been attacked for needlessly twisting the facts of the case.The film,for instance,shows the Maguire Seven on trial with the Guildford Four,though the cases were tried separately.In some of its most affecting scenes,it shows Conlon,played by Daniel Day-Lewis,sharing a jail cell with his father,though the two were often not even in the same prison.A grand and heroic part is carved for actress Emma Thompson,playing Conlon's lawyer,Gareth Peirce,but in reality Peirce was a minor figure and another lawyer, Alastair Logan,deserves most of the credit for freeing the Four.An important scene in which Peirce steals a crucial piece of evidence from a police file was fabricated for the film;it was a police investigation that uncovered the buried evidence of Conlon's innocence.
Sheridan insists that he was seeking an "emotional honesty" and that the real subject of his film was a son's changing relationship with his father.But if that was his intended subject,say some close to the case,the director should have used someone else's story."The truth is that Gerry Conlon had very little time for his father,"says Sean Smyth,an uncle."It's a good film,well acted and everything,"admits Conlon's aunt,Anne Maguire."But I think if they'd put more of the true facts in,it would have been a much more powerful film."
