Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Sinéad O’Shea
Writer – Sinéad O’Shea
Stars – Jessie Buckley, Declan Conlon, Gabriel Byrne

Edna O’Brien was born in County Clare in 1930 and died in London in 2024. She was a woman of integrity, a quality that was lacking in Irish public discourse when she was growing up. With the cooperation of O’Brien, O’Shea has created a chronological biopic of O’Brien’s life. She is greatly assisted by the use of O’Brien’s diaries and the various contemporary appearances on television of O’Brien over the years. Jessie Buckley is the voice of O’Brien as she reads her diaries but her own voice is heard loud and clear, particularly with a 2023 interview she made in connection with this film and a further one in 2024 when she was infirm physically but remained mentally alert.

Inevitably, there are talking heads but these are well chosen and include Ann Enright, Gabriel Byrne, Walter Mosley, Andrew O’Hagan and her son Carlo amongst others. O’Shea charts Edna’s family life in County Clare, her early years training as a pharmacist in Dublin, her romance, marriage and bitter divorce from her husband Ernest Gebler, her fight for custody of her two sons and her glamorous life in London as friend and hostess to the famous. But O’Shea emphasises Edna’s work ethic as a writer which sustained her both in the good times and the bad times which were not infrequent.

The final interview given by Edna in 2024 is remarkable where notwithstanding her frailty, her indomitable spirit is seen intact. O’Shea concludes fittingly with her funeral which takes place as was her wish on Holy Island, Lough Derg where she had bought a plot for her grave. The only piece of real estate that she owned as she proudly states. The footage of the cortege as it crosses Lough Derg to Holy Island coupled with the simplicity of its ecclesiastical ruins make for a fitting final resting place for a life well lived, fearlessly and generously.

O’Shea has created a documentary that proclaims how important O’Brien was in the second half of the twentieth century in Ireland. This film will further her reputation and help to consolidate her position as a writer and as a citizen of the first rank even if official Ireland was incapable of perceiving it for much of her life.