MICHAEL DWYER R.I.P

2009 was a year of death. Same as any other year then but with one former Big Brother star making headlines for the three months before her death and strange faked death scares (I realise it was barely three hours but I was ready to light a candle to “dead” star Zach Braff) its been an interesting year for our old pal the Grim Reaper. However as the decade closes one death in particular saddens me: that of Irish Times film critic Michael Dwyer.

I never knew him personally but his reviews for the Ticket, the Friday supplement for the Irish Times have always been fantastic. He didn’t have a rapier wit like his co-critic Donald Clarke but his reviews were always solid and ninety nine per cent of the time correct. Having read the news that he died I decided id do a little bit of journalistic research since I knew nothing about him. Don’t expect huge revelations however, my research generally stems to Wikipedia and whatever I can find on Google and this was purely for personal benefit. For example I did not know that he co-founded the Dublin film festival in 1985, nor that after attending the Cannes film festival for twenty four years straight he was awarded the Chevalier des Artes et des Lettres, an award recognising contribution to arts, literature or the propagation of those both those fields.

Michael had been absent from the Ticket since June and noticeably so. His fellow critic Donald Clarke had been criticising and acclaiming (mostly the former) on Dwyer’s behalf but the man was missed. After all Mr. Clarke only so much snide cynicism that he can inject into his reviews! Mr. Dwyer did have a cameo in the Review of the Year and it was satisfying to see him back possibly for good. As he said himself: “Cynical as I can be, I clearly had underrated my relationship with the cinema…As the audience filed in all around us, I felt a deep sense of belonging and a surge of pleasure to be in a cinema after all those months, to be back where I belonged.” Sadly this was not to be. Michael Dwyer died of the mysteriously titled “an illness” on January second. As the Irish Times and RTE have both told me he is survived by partner Brian, his sisters Anne and Maria and his mother Mary.

I once wrote Mr. Dwyer a letter- one not of praise but of criticism for his unfair reviews of children’s films- however I never sent it… I’m intensely disorganised you realise! This was perhaps the only criticism I ever gave him though. Through his hailing and slating of films I have resolved many family arguments as to which piece of celluloid we would go and see.

Michael wherever you are (reincarnated, the afterlife, a coffin-I wont digress from the article with a religious debate) I’m sure you’re in front of a cinema screen watching old favourites and new classics.