Ciarín Scott’s documentary hits harder than Stephen Bradley’s recent biopic as a stirring segment running at about forty minutes in the middle makes this a raw experience.
It's not that the documentary isn’t interested in Noble’s humanitarian work in the Far East. The director makes it to Ho Chi Minh City to see Noble interact with the children in her care. In a sequence that was only fleetingly mentioned in the fictionalised drama, she travels to Mongolia to watch Noble help children living in manholes. While the images presented here are difficult, it’s only when she returns to Ireland that In A House That Ceased To Be becomes the documentary it wants to be.
It’s here that her passion for helping children in need is matched only by her hatred for those who ‘cared’ for her and her siblings when she was a child. Scott lets the camera roll on Noble, who does her best to reel in the hate. However, she can’t stop it once it’s unleashed, recalling stories of what happened to her, her little sisters and little brother in institutions in Letterfrack and Clifden. The beatings and humiliation they suffered on a daily basis still hurts them today with her brother, pinning for his older sister, was informed that Christina was dead when she lived on fifteen minutes away.
The guilt that she was unable to save them despite promising her dying mother she would cuts right through Noble, and Scott’s camera documents all the hate and frustration that stems from that. The plain-speaking children’s rights activist almost vibrates with bitterness as she visits the institutions that housed her, ready to pounce on anyone. "Are you a priest?", she calls out to a man who pulls up to the front door. Luckily for him, he wasn’t. Later, in an interview in a bar where Christina’s disgust with the church continues, she is dismissed as a 'spoofer' by a pint-swigging middle-aged man. Noble has to force herself to leave lest she attacked the man.
To stop her documentary from becoming an elongated rant (which would have been totally fine), Scott ensures that everything builds to a touching unification of the Noble siblings, the first time all four have been together since they were separated as children.
A thoroughly absorbing documentary.
