Susan Granger's review of "LIAM" (Lions Gate Films)
British director Stephen Frears, who set "High Fidelity" and "The Hi-Ho Country" in America, goes back to the smoky pubs and cobbled streets of Liverpool in the 1930s for this gritty story of a working-class family. Stammering seven year-old Liam (Anthony Borrows), who attends a strict Catholic school and is preparing for his First Communion, observes the gradual disintegration of his family when his dad (Ian Hart) and brother (David Hart) lose their jobs as dockworkers. Feeling bitter, disempowered and helpless at their poverty, they blame the Jews and the Irish and join the angry Black Shirts, fascists who turn neighbor-against-neighbor and resort to fire-bombing violence. In the meantime, Liam's teenage sister (Megan Burns) becomes a maid to the wife of the shipyard's wealthy Jewish owner. While she's thrilled to be able to bring home their discarded leftovers to feed the family, she's guilt-ridden not only about being an accomplice to her employer's adultery but also about denying being Catholic in order to get the job. Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern ("Priest") cleverly blends subtle comedy with his drama and, once again, presents the Catholic clergy as not only terrorizing but hypocritical, subversively droning on about how sin "blackens your soul with filth." And Liam has a great big sin to worry about - since he inadvertently glimpsed his kindly, penny-pinching mother (Claire Hackett Liam) emerging nude from the bathtub. Andrew Dunn's photography is truly stunning and Stephen Fineran's production design succeeds in depicting that era far more poignantly than the film version of "Angela's Ashes." On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "Liam" is a serious 7, underscoring the inevitable tragedy resulting from religious intolerance.
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