Good Friday Agreement: Titanic, Leo, Kate and the big leap 25 years on
- Published
It is 25 years since both Titanic hit our screens and the Good Friday Agreement was signed
It was launched 25 years ago to great, though not universal acclaim, featured a love story between two characters who ordinarily would never have met and is still lauded as an overwhelming success, despite obvious flaws.
At this point, a word of reassurance for those who feel they have already read quite enough pieces about the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
This is not another.
OK it is kind of but, for a start, while the agreement has done many things, engendering love across the divide perhaps is not one of them.
No, this is about 25 years of another epic success against the odds which just happens to share its silver anniversary with the unlikely script line unveiled at Stormont on 10 April 1998.
That's right, we're talking about Titanic, the movie, and the Good Friday Agreement.
Bertie Ahern, Senator George Mitchell and Tony Blair played central roles in the Good Friday Agreement talks
Nothing obvious in common apart from a birthday you might think. Well, think again.
And, no, we cannot avoid icebergs - one of which led to disaster and others which holed the main structure above the waterline, though have so far not proved fatal.
First, a confession: When I saw the movie 25 years ago I hated it with a passion.
Three hours I will never get back. You know the saying.
I now think I must have slept through it, because I went back to see it with my children recently and liked it much better.
Just like how some parties who were unimpressed with the Good Friday Agreement at the time now look back with a certain fondness lacking in 1998 - you know who you are!
For a start, I could remember so little about it that for the first 10 minutes I thought I was at the wrong film.
Then slowly it began to click. And my mind went into overdrive.
'We have jumped, you follow'
First of all Kate Winslet (Rose) threatens to jump overboard. This kind of thing was fashionable at Castle Buildings in 1998 too (metaphorically at least) except Arlene Foster and Jeffrey Donaldson actually did it, leaving the talks and leaping from the Ulster Unionist Party to the DUP five years later.
What stopped Rose, of course, was Leo DiCaprio (Jack) who threatened to jump in and fish her out though if he'd succeeded it would have put even George Mitchell's miraculous powers in the shade.
Titanic won 11 Oscars and helped to launch the careers of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet
"You're crazy" she tells him. He replies: "That's what everyone says but with all due respect I'm not the one hanging off the back of a ship here."
And to give this a special Good Friday sheen, he adds: "I'm too involved now. You jump and I jump - remember?"
What was it David Trimble told Gerry Adams in a famous line at the Waterfront Hall in 1999 when he threatened to collapse the Northern Ireland Executive unless the IRA failed to disarm?
"We have done our bit Mr Adams, it is over to you. We have jumped, you follow."
Of course, in normal circumstances Rose and Jack were about as likely to meet as Trimble and Adams. One unlikely couple was brought together aboard the Titanic; the other at Castle Buildings.
One relationship was highly fictionalised; the other was real, though equally hard to believe and ended no better than the one on the famous ship.
Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley formed a once unlikely partnership at Stormont
It would be many years until, in a plot twist even a Hollywood scriptwriter would have rejected, a truly remarkable and enduring relationship emerged to rescue the agreement from sinking yet again - Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness.
It now requires something equally as unlikely if it is to rise from the icy waters of another Stormont crisis this time.
Or to put it another way: Will his party allow Sir Jeffrey Donaldson to jump back aboard the good ship Stormont in time for President Biden to turn up at Easter in a true Hollywood-style happy ending?
You wouldn't bet against it.
Somehow the Good Friday Agreement always bounces back to the point where even some of its opponents 25 years ago now reference it when it suits their particular point of view.
As they said in Belfast of the Titanic: "It was fine when it left here."
Declan Harvey and Tara Mills explore the text of the Good Friday Agreement - the deal which heralded the end of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
They look at what the Agreement actually said and hear from some of the people who helped get the deal across the line.
Click here to listen to the full box set on BBC Sounds.
TROUBLES AND PEACE: A story of history and hope - 25 years since the Good Friday Agreement was signed.
ENDGAME IN IRELAND: The inside story of the peace process in Northern Ireland.
