Customer Reviews

The Butcher Boy

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

There has been a welcome trend in recent years of films that follow the first person narrative of their source novels. Seemingly free of conventional morality they provide the viewer with the resplendent and singular worldview of their often deranged protagonists. The standouts have been Danny Boyle's Trainspotting 1996 from Irvine Welsh's novel and Fight Club 1999 from Chuck Palahniuk's novel. I haven't read Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy, but from the film's looney narration its easy to guess that the book was written in first person. In the hands of fellow Irishman Neil Jordan's suprisingly whimsical hands, the film is a hysterical tragedy if there ever was one.

The time is 1960s Ireland. And from the bizzare opening credits where Mack The Knife plays over the comic book images that so completely engulf the world of our young anti-hero, it is clear that this is not a clear eyed picture of Irish life, but Ireland according to Francis Brady (Eamonn Owens). He's quite a scallywag this lad, he marches through the town along side his best friend Joe Purcell as if they owned it. Surrounded by Irish religious hysteria and John Wayne movies the villains in their world are the detestably snobbish and English accented Mrs.Nugent(Fiona Shaw), Aleins and Communists(in that order). According to the adult Francie's franctic narration his Da Brady (Stephen Rea) is "the best musician in the world" and his Ma is certainly the kindest and most loving of mothers. It is indeed a wonderful life, or a wonderful fantasy.

It becomes depressingly clear that Francie's father is a violent alcoholic, his mother a depressed suicidal and most importantly that his friend Joe is embarrassed by him. We the audience are allowed to see what Francie has chosen to block out, he hides in his world of vivid fantasy under a violent exhuberance. As conditions get worse, as his real life crumbles he regresses further into his own world. His fantasies become more vivid, the four letter word spouting Virign Mary(Sinead O'Connor) makes a personal appearance, the insect like aliens invade and the atomic bomb is dropped over Ireland. It is a journey into madness as a protective mechanism, laced with wicked humour and embodied by Eamonn Owens in what is probably the best child performance I've ever seen.

It is to Jordan's great credit that he never steps outside Francie's world for a more even handed prespective. And the narration by the wonderful Stephen Rea as the older(never wiser) Francie is often howlingly funny, particularly when he conducts live conversations with his younger self. Take this lovely piece of his mind when he is trapped at reform school, and is concocting a more socially acceptable image:

"If anybody comes looking for that bad bastard Francie Brady, they won't find him. He will be too busy getting the Francie Brady Not A Bad Bastard Anymore diploma."

Or this charming tidbit as he watches rural farmers, who have come to town for some shopping, dance at a local saloon:

"Some people call it dancing, I call it wading through manure."

The laughs get fewer and further apart. Jordan is a great director but his refusal to acknowledge the tragedy of this kid is disconcerting. The alternative would have been a sappy Hollywood style disease of the week sacharrine snooze fest. I found myself wishing that Jordan would find a way to acknowledge the tragedy of this character without abandoning the first person narration. He doesn't. As a result the second half of the film has the same happy tunes on soundtrack while a child goes insane. It is rather cruel. In the first half I was laughing with Francis, in this second I would have been laughing at him.

Despite my complaints, I still think The Butcher Boy is a success. Its twisted world view is both its biggest problem and its greatest asset. It is an orginal, and for that alone it is worth seeing.

When you think of Francis Brady, and after you see the film you certainly will, think of the some of the original lyrics of the Music only version of Mack The Knife that plays over the opening credits:

"You know when that shark bites. With his teeth babe. Scarlet billows start to spread. Fancy gloves though, wears ol' MacHeath babe. So there's never, never a trace of red."

Francie's fantasies are his fancy gloves. Think about it.

Neil Jordan's difficult-to-watch story about the all-too-common effects of violence on children. Francie Brady is growing up in Carney, Ireland, and enters adolence during the Cold War. He watches the mushroom clouds on the telie and hates the Commies. His drunk of a father, a talented musician who works in a slaughter house, beats both Francie and his mother. Francie bullies a school mate and the boy's mother calls him a pig. The audience gets to watch as these influences steadily take hold of Francie's psyche.

Eamon Owens (couldn't have been more than 15 yo when the movie was being filmed) who plays Francie, is so good, it's scary.

Slow moving plot? Oh, sure, it would be nice if abused children like Francie wasted no time and got straight to acting on their schizophrenic visions by the time they were, say, two or three years old. But let's face it, you have to be of a certain height to commit such acts, and at three he just would not have been tall enough.

The Butcher Boy is yet another masterpiece by Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan of The Crying Game fame. After seeing the movie four times, I went out to get Patrick Mc Cabe's book, but there were no copies left, so I can't discern which aspects of the movie were solely Jordan's vision and which were the work of Mc Cabe.

However, it is clear that the feeling throughout the movie is the work of Jordan. The surreal, cartoon-like ambience and the dark, macabre humor amount to nothing less than a brilliant way to present such otherwise deeply depressing material. And if it had been presented in an ordinary way, as the story of a disturbed child with frightful, self-absorbed parents who eventually snaps, it might not have amounted to much more than a Lifetime TV movie-and they're a dime a dozen, a commonness guaranteed to dilute the impact of such a tragic tale.

I originally rented the movie for two reasons-because it's Neil Jordan, and to stare at gorgeous Stephen Rea (can't blame me there), possibly the only actor on earth who needs not say a single word to convey volumes of feeling, and whose spoken word is a symphony of sound. The benefit is that I got to see some things the second and third and even fourth times that I never saw the first time through. Like for instance, when Francie's mother is about to hang herself, and she asks Francie if he'd ever let her down. Is this also a little joke about letting her down from the noose had she gone through with it? Can he never make the right choice (he answered no)?

Interspersed throughout the film are little breaks of comic relief that help you deal with the sad material-little stabs at some of our favorite targets like the Catholic Church, the priesthood, the English sensibilities, that framed portrait of JFK that my grandmother too had hanging in every room, the influence of TV....

And by the way, Eamonn Owens is amazing as Francie.

Great movie. Just see it.

I hope I don't use the term loosely, and at the risk of hyperbole and excessive adjective use, but this is a great movie. Hilarious and heartbreaking. It's one of the smartest, most fascinating and moving pictures I've seen. I can't think of a better made picture or a more accurate, poignant take on both childhood and dementia. Dark but not black, and neither cynical nor a shallow emotionally manipulating tear-jerker, which may account for this pitch-perfect adaptation never being heard of upon release in theaters. The young man playing the lead is stunning, the other actors excellent, the sets, costumes, and direction dead on. I later took the book out of the library, so blown away was I. This is, to trot out an old word, art.

That being said, release on DVD!

When will this masterpiece finally be released on DVD? When!? How can 'Monkeybone' be on DVD and not 'Butcher Boy'? This is the best damn 'kid gone psycho' movie since Children of the Corn. Actually, that's a misnomer. This is simply the most provocative, well-written, and well-photographed cold-war parable ever made. Put it out on DVD, Mrs. Nugent, or pay the toll!

If such a thing may even be said, this may well be the funniest movie ever to be made about childhood schizophrenia. I don't know if I completely buy into other reviewers' interpretations of political subtext. I don't know that the world that eventually gets the best of the Incredible Francie Brady is even a uniquely Irish one- and what is probably the most chilling aspect of this movie is how "normal" life tends to converge with Francie's deepening insanity: the Bay of Pigs (clever story-overlap, huh?), religious mania, science fiction / cold war paranoia. These are the things that lurk in the world that make us look at ourselves and ask, "Just how sane are we, really?"
Eventually, as everything good in his life cuts away from underneath him, Francie (Eamonn Owens, in what might be the best performance by a young actor that I can recall) ricochets back and forth between pathetic and frightening. This film is one of those that is painful to watch, and we are inclined, like Francie, to start to dream of how it would only take one bomb to wipe out all the aliens and communists and Mrs. Nugents.
After we've been gleefully horrified and blasphemously assulted, the only real break from the movies' grim nihilism comes at the very end, where the only word of comfort is that God has a special place in his heart for the likes of Francie Brady.

This brilliant film was evidently not seen by many when it played in theatres -- and that's a shame. Ugly at times, unsettling at most, powerful always, it gives us an unforgettable look into the mind of a young pre-teen Irish boy going mad, reacting to the world around him as it falls apart before his eyes.

Francie Brady has suffered -- his mother is depressed and suicidal, his father is an abusive alcoholic, his best friend's mother is adept at putting on airs and looking down her nose at most of her neighbors -- and, after getting into trouble enough times to warrant being placed in a special school, Francie becomes the 'favorite' of one of the priests there, who seems to enjoy dressing the boy up in wigs and frocks. Who wouldn't step off the curb after all of this? The boy's ensuing fantasies and increasingly horrific acts of violence and retribution become understandable, if not justified in the viewer's eyes.

Neil Jordan's direction is right on target -- the device of the adult Francie narrating the story in a voice-over, completely overbearing in other films, is perfectly done here. The screenplay (by Jordan and Patrick McCabe) is excellent as well, closely following both the body and spirit of McCabe's incredible novel. McCabe even has a bit part in the film, as Francie's intermittent partner-in-mischief Jimmy the Skite. Stephen Rea is in fine form as Francie's sotted da, and Fiona Shaw does a great job as the chillingly unlikable Mrs. Nugent. Another visionary piece of casting was putting Sinead O'Connor in the role of the Virgin Mary, the object of several of Francie's hallucinations -- I'm sure she had great fun with this.

The star of the show, however, is young Eamon Owens. I have seldom seen an actor so young dive into a role with such boundless enthusiasm -- be BECOMES Francie Brady. His energy makes his role explode off the screen, taking it right to the edge, but never so far over the top as to make it unbelievable. This is a first rate performance -- it'll be interesting to see where he turns up next.

Evidently Warner Brothers was unsure what to do with this film -- the garish poster art is one indication of that. A movie poster is, much of the time, the public's first and only impression of a film -- and looking at this aspect, how could the film come across at a glance but as a slash-and-gash shocker? Nothing could be further from the truth -- makes me wonder if the boys in marketing gave it more than a casual viewing before deciding on their tactics. There is violence here, to be sure, but this film has much more intelligence and depth going for it than the poster would have us believe.

I would love to see this released on DVD -- the possibilities for 'extra material' are wonderful: interviews with Jordan and McCabe, commentary by Jordan, etc. This is a film that warrants further exploration, and DVD would be a great media with which to do that.

I would go so far to say that I consider this film to be one of the undiscovered masterpieces of modern cinema -- I can't imagine any viewer coming away from it unaffected, though it is admittedly not for every taste.

The thing to do is to read Patrick McCabe's novel -- it's an unsettling experience as well, but one so rich that even reading it after seeing the film cannot lessen its effect.

What do you get when you cross Waking Ned Devine with Leolo and The Poisoner's Handbook? Probably something like The Butcher Boy. I rented the movie not knowing a thing about it aside from the fact it was directed by Neil Jordan. Since I've enjoyed Neil Jordan's other flicks, I ignored the Lord of the Flies-esque cover and took The Butcher Boy home with me.

I'm glad I did, because this film is a masterpiece.

Francie Brady (played by Eamonn Owens) is equal parts Alex (from A Clockwork Orange) and Pollyanna (from the saccharine Disney flick). It's a strange mixture of evil, optimism, and naivete, but somehow, it works. Francie Brady is a happy-go-lucky character who's just as likely to wink at you as he is to try to bludgeon you to death with chains. Heck, he might do both at the same time!

The humour in The Butcher Boy is just as black as in Man Bites Dog, and the dialogue as thickly brogued as in Trainspotting. If you have trouble with Irish accents, you won't catch all the dialogue, but that's okay. The physical acting conveys the emotion.

I am absolutely amazed by the acting abilities of Eamonn Owens. Only when Francie's character was an adult did I question what I had seen. Up to that point, I pretty much believed everything I saw. There was a total suspension of disbelief as I watched Francie humourously and energetically sweep a myriad woes beneath a rug in his mind: an abusive and alcoholic father, a fragile and suicidal mother, abandonment by his best friend, sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest, alien invasions, nuclear war, etcetera. When there was too much under that rug, something had to happen. The mental breakdown of a prepubescent bully is heartrending, horrifying, and savagely hilarious.

Have been waiting for this for years, after buying a vhs ex rental copy years ago!
Who knows why it has taken so long, but this film is easily Jordans best film by far.
A wonderfully cast and shot film. Essential.

There's a release of this fascinating movie on DVD . If you have a multizone player you can enjoy the movie from www.amazon.de (Germany.)It is stereo only and on zone 2 .