The Butcher Boy
(Ireland/USA, 1998)
Seen on 25 May 1998 with Lothlorien and Scooter for $8.50 at the Village East Cinema.
Director Neil Jordan brings us an unrelenting view of a disturbed young Irish lad. Really, truly unrelenting. Perhaps it's a metaphor. That must be what it was. Yes. A depressing, long, unrelenting metaphor that made me very happy to be brought up in a leafy suburb.
Francie Brady is the product of a poor, fractious couple. He's a wifebeating drunk (Stephen Rea) and she's having a series of nervous breakdowns (Annie Brady). But they are Da and Ma and Francie loves them; they are all he's got, really, and he desperately wants a "normal family life."
Francie lives in his own little world; a chubby lad with ruddy cheeks. Boisterous with bravado and quivering with fear; he's a little toughie who just wants to be loved and understood. Eamonn Owens really does a remarkable job for his first movie.
But Francie has a long way to go in the being loved and understood department. He has decided that Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw)--the mother of a boy he torments--is the root of all his problems, ever since she came back from England and brought airs with her.
Francie lives in what must be the world's stupidest town, though. Knowing his family problems, and knowing he is disturbed and has been to a boys' reformatory and even the mental hospital (he calls it the garage because they fix you there), they still let him run around town and he's even allowed to work in the slaughterhouse! Hello! He's deranged. Give good old Francie the biggest cleaver you've got! Every adult in this film is ineffectual--and that's the point, I guess. Still, it's pretty odd.
Along the way, we see Francie chase flies from his poor Old Da's corpse in the living room, and talk to the Virgin Mary (ironically played by Sinead O'Connor), and almost get buggered but a randy old priest (Milo O'Shea), whom he attacks. Guess what? It gets worse...
The backdrop to this story, set in 1962, is the Cuban missile crisis. Even in this tiny Irish town, there is a lot of worry of a nuclear winter. Personally, I didn't find this device effective. Not like the *Ice Storm* using the Watergate hearings as a backdrop, for example. Francie's negligent supervisors are more to blame than the Russians and the Americans. The device of devout Catholicism contrasted to a complete lack of adult supervision and a hatred of children ought to have more play than it did
Also very effective in his child role is Alan Boyle as Francie's best pal Joe, possibly the only person he hold dear beyond his parents.
Normally, I think I would have liked this movie, but Francie's madness and the negligence of the adults was just too unrelenting. There are also moments of joy and humor, which are a bit jarring against the horrors of his life. Perhaps keeping it completely bleak would have made *The Butcher Boy* more like *Fresh* or *Los Olvidados*, where loss is complete and desperate. Bringing magic realism into realism is an unnecessary addition.
Still, it's better than *Interview with the Vampire*, which Jordan also directed. From the novel by Pat McCabe (as Patrick McCabe) and screenplay by Neil Jordan. Cinematography by Adrian Biddle; costume Design by Sandy Powell (II).
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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