The Butcher Boy (1998)
Director: Neil Jordan Cast: Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Eamonn Owens, Alan Boyle, Aisling O'Sullivan Screenplay: Neil Jordan, Patrick McCabe Producers: Redmond Morris, Stephen Woolley Runtime: 124 min. US Distribution: Warner Bros. Rated R: violence, language
By Nathaniel R. Atcheson (nate@pyramid.net)
I'd like to believe that we all see films that strike us in ways that we know will not affect every viewer. I was looking forward to The Butcher Boy mostly because Neil Jordan is a brilliant artist, and one of my favorite film makers; he has proved this over and over again, in films like Mona Lisa and The Crying Game. But I have a glaring personal issue with this film -- the main character, Francie Brady, and the portrayal of him by young Eamonn Owens. I can say that it's a good performance, but I'd be misreporting my feelings, because it's also one of the most intensely annoying performances I've ever had to watch.
But that's not my only problem with The Butcher Boy. This is supposed to be a black comedy, but I found absolutely none of it even the slightest bit amusing, let alone funny. And it's a crazy picture, full of misguided energy and expletives, and any kind of meaning that Patrick McCabe inserted into his novel (on which this film is based) is not at all clear to me from Jordan's film. It's ironic, really, the amount of energy that this film tries to harness, because, for all of the wacky music and graphic deaths, it left me feeling pretty drab.
The film is about the childhood struggles of Francie Brady, a young Irish boy who lives with his alcoholic father (Stephen Rae) and suicidal mother (Aisling O'Sullivan). He's a loud, obnoxious kid, and seems fairly unmoved by the unpleasant conditions in which he lives. His best friend is Joe (Alan Boyle), and they spend a lot of time in the woods chasing each other around.
Francie's nemesis is the evil Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw); he goes to school with her son, and Francie finds pleasure in torturing the young boy. Later, Francie pulls a prank (a vicious prank, I should say) on Mrs. Nugent, which gets him sent to a boarding school. Just when Francie seems to be improving, the head priest at the school turns out to be a pedophile; Francie, of course, has no idea what this old man's problem is, but the incident allows Francie to return to his hometown in Ireland.
The film doesn't follow strict plotting, nor does it have a truly cohesive narrative. I don't mind these elements so much, but in The Butcher Boy, I was never quite sure what I was supposed to be watching for. Clearly the focus is Francie, but both the character and Owens' portrayal of him are static throughout the picture. If any child ever had attention deficit disorder, then Francie is that child, for this is a boy so out of control, so crazed, so maniacal, that I simply could not manifest sympathy for him. I never saw him as anything more than a sadistic little demon, and this fact simply wrings every bit of comedy out of the film for me.
In addition to this, I can't see where Jordan has tweaked the material to move it over the dubious boundary from serious to funny. Elliott Goldenthal's musical score is adequately twisted, but it takes more than music to make this kind of material funny and engaging. Jordan has dabbled in graphic violence in his other films (both The Crying Game and Mona Lisa have sudden moments of extreme violence), but he never wanted it to be funny before. Here, I get the feeling that I'm not supposed to take it seriously, but there's no incentive to laugh. So, I took the movie seriously, and what I got was a rather disengaging biography about a heinous, unsympathetic child.
The other performances are very good, and probably what I like most about the film. Stephen Rae is a terrific actor (and always in Jordan's films); here, he does a good job of making us care about this man who has wrecked his son's life through neglect and alcohol abuse. Fiona Shaw is an underused and underappreciated actress, and her work here proves that she needs to make more films; her intense and often exaggerated performance as Mrs. Nugent is the one element in The Butcher Boy that I think works with the black comedy-feel that it seems Jordan was going for. Unfortunately, she, like the rest of the actors, is stifled by the handling of the story.
I find great distaste in criticizing Jordan so harshly, since he is such a fantastic film maker and because I am just a self-proclaimed critic, but I'm confident knowing that this is the first misstep in his distinguished career. As for Eamonn Owens and young Francie Brady, both are people whom I hope to never meet for as long as I live.
** out of **** (4/10, C-)
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Nathaniel R. Atcheson
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