THE BUTCHER BOY
A Film Review by James Berardinelli
RATING: *** OUT OF ****
Ireland/U.S., 1998 U.S. Release Date: 4/17/98 (limited) Running Length: 1:48 MPAA Classification: R (Violence, profanity) Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Cast: Eamonn Owens, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Alan Boyle, Aisling O'Sullivan, Andrew Fullerton, Sinead O'Connor Director: Neil Jordan Producers: Stephen Woolley, Redmond Morris Screenplay: Patrick McCabe and Neil Jordan based on the novel by Patrick McCabe Cinematography: Adrian Biddle Music: Elliot Goldenthal U.S. Distributor: Warner Brothers
Over the past few weeks, I have heard THE BUTCHER BOY compared to everything from A CLOCKWORK ORANGE to THE 400 BLOWS. And, while I suppose there are some superficial similarities, those who are making such comparisons appear to be giving far too much credit to this film. THE BUTCHER BOY works best as a dark comedy and social satire, and is somewhat less successful as a character study of a deeply-troubled young boy whose violent impulses are fed by his unstable environment.
After a pair of big-budget motion pictures (INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, MICHAEL COLLINS), Irish director Neil Jordan has returned to the kind of smaller movies that earned him a reputation (MONA LISA, THE CRYING GAME). And, while THE BUTCHER BOY, an adaptation of Patrick McCabe's novel, is far from Jordan's best work, it is a consistently engrossing and sporadically comic look at a seemingly-normal boy who turns into the biggest nightmare of a small Irish town.
THE BUTCHER BOY takes place during the early 1960s, when the fear of atomic obliteration was on everyone's mind, even the denizens of out- of-the-way villages like the one pictured here. 12-year old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) is the local bully. He and his best friend, Joe (Alan Boyle), delight in tormenting other kids, especially the shy Philip (Andrew Fullerton), whose mother, Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw), is Francie's personal nemesis. According to him, everything that's bad in the world can be traced back to her. Meanwhile, Francie's home life is less-than-ideal. His mother (Aisling O'Sullivan) is on the verge of a breakdown and about to be sent off to "the garage" to be fixed up, and his father (Stephen Rea), "the best drinker in the town," is frequently drunk and abusive.
At first, we view Francie as a fairly typical product of a dysfunctional home, but it soon becomes apparent that his problems run much deeper. This isn't the story of a prankster who finds redemption in a Dickensian fashion -- it's a darker, more ominous tale about a boy whose hostile surroundings feed his inner anger and paranoia and turn him into an amoral monster. Most coming-of-age films are about kids triumphing by overcoming adversity. THE BUTCHER BOY shows what happens when a child fights back not by bettering himself, but by lashing out at others.
Jordan presents THE BUTCHER BOY as more of a black comedy than a tragedy. Francie's internal monologues (the film is infected with the dreaded voiceover narrative) are sometimes corrosively funny, especially his descriptions of certain characters. He shows contempt for just about everyone except his best friend, Joe, and, at times, his mother and father. By playing up the most absurd aspect of almost every situation, Jordan manages to find the humor in even the most horrific sequences. In some ways, I was reminded of the recent film INTIMATE RELATIONS, which possessed a similar, bizarre tone.
Without a doubt, Jordan has a good sense of time and place, and uses it to the film's advantage. This is a world where people go about their daily work under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation (the Cuban missile crisis occurs during the course of the film). "The Fugitive" is on television, although the only one in the town to own a working set is Mrs. Nugent. The accepted treatment for psychiatric patients is shock therapy. And the influence of Catholicism is all- pervasive.
Jordan's occasional use of preposterous images and magic realism (including Sinead O'Connor as the Virgin Mary, invading space aliens, and an exploding A-bomb) are designed to draw us into Francie's world (a place that's created as a defense mechanism against the cruelties of Francie's environment, and is more than a few steps removed from the norm). In reality, however, they accomplish the opposite by erecting an artificial barrier between the audience and the character. There's no debating that Francie is a fascinating individual, or that newcomer Eamonn Owens gives an amazing performance, but this boy doesn't burrow under our skin in the same way that the two girls from HEAVENLY CREATURES (a not entirely dissimilar film) do. We see Francie's explosive rage clinically, from a distance. We do not experience or participate in it, and that keeps THE BUTCHER BOY from being a truly memorable motion picture.
Copyright 1998 James Berardinelli
- James Berardinelli e-mail: berardin@mail.cybernex.net
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