The Butcher Boy Review
by Seth Bookey (sethbook AT panix DOT com)June 29th, 1998
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).
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Copyright (c) 1998, Seth J. Bookey, New York, NY 10021
[email protected]; http://www.panix.com/~sethbook
More movie reviews by Seth Bookey, with graphics, can be found at
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2679/kino.html
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