Themes: Mental Illness, Kids in Trouble, Fathers and Sons
Main Cast: Eamonn Owens, Alan Boyle, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Andrew Fullerton
Release Year: 1997
Country: IE/UK
Run Time: 115 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Neil Jordan directed this adaptation of Patrick McCabe's novel about a boy's struggles with violence and mental illness. Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) is a young boy growing up in Dublin in the early 1960s, where his life is dominated by his active imagination and his best friend Joe (Alan Boyle). But beneath this benign surface lurks a troubled soul; his father (Stephen Rea) is an embittered alcoholic, his mother (Aisling O'Sullivan) is emotionally unstable and periodically ends up in the local mental hospital (or as she calls it, "the garage," because it's where they take you when you break down), and their next-door neighbor, Mrs. Nugent (Fiona Shaw) often rants that the Bradys are "pigs" not fit to live with. For all their troubles, Francie fiercely loves his parents, and he can't abide Mrs. Nugent's insults. But his playful childhood pranks begin to advance into more destructive and menacing behavior, which leads him to his own stay in "the garage." Branded a lunatic by the community and shorn of his only close friendship when Joe takes up with Mrs. Nugent's son, Francie soon reaches the point of collapse. With nowhere to go, Francie takes an especially awful job as a butcher's assistant, and his overactive imagination goes into overdrive, flooding his mind with images of alien takeover, atomic apocalypse, and the Virgin Mary (Sinead O'Connor) that lead him further down the path toward shocking acts of violence. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Recalling Stanley Kubrick's powerful 1973 film A Clockwork Orange in its dissection of madness and society's desire to cure it, this hallucinatory, blackly comic feature by the always-provocative Neil Jordan manages to incorporate a variety of mood shifts and subtle commentary in one fully-realized piece of work. Its young star, the gifted Eamonn Owens, gives a finely-etched portrayal of young derangement (which recalls Malcolm McDowell in the aforementioned Kubrick film), and Jordan's signature touches keep the film's absurdist -- yet somehow believable -- execution constantly engaging. Criticized in some circles as a clever but cold work, the film is decidedly not for all tastes, especially in its comically bemused take on its lead character's bizarre behavior. However, Jordan's auspicious handling of such tricky material transcends such quibbles, and provides rewarding entertainment for those willing to go along with it. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
Aisling O'Sullivan - Ma Brady; Ian Hart - Uncle Alo; Patrick McCabe - Jimmy-The-Skite; Sinéad O'Connor - Our Lady; Stephen Rea - Narrator; Ardal O'Hanlon - Mr. Purcell
Credit
Anna Packard - Art Director, Susie Figgis - Casting, Sandy Powell - Costume Designer, Christopher Newman - First Assistant Director, Neil Jordan - Director, Tony Lawson - Editor, Stephen Woolley - Executive Producer, Morag Ross - Makeup, Anthony Pratt - Production Designer, Adrian Biddle - Cinematographer, Redmond Morris - Producer, Josie MacAvin - Set Designer, Joss Williams - Special Effects, Kieran Horgan - Sound/Sound Designer, Patrick McCabe - Screenwriter, Patrick McCabe - Book Author, Laurence O'Toole - Graphic Design
Berlin Film Festival:
February 1998 United States:
April 3, 1998 Ireland:
July 13, 1997 (1997-07-13) United Kingdom:
February 20, 1998 (1998-02-20) Australia
July 23, 1998 (1998-07-23)[1]
Set in the early 1960s, The Butcher Boy is about Francis Brady (Eamonn Owens), a 12-year-old boy, who becomes a problem child due to his dysfunctional family, and displays uncontrollable brutality when he grows up. The film won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998 and a Special Mention for Owens' "astonishing lead". It also won the European Film Award for Best Cinematographer for Adrian Biddle. The Butcher Boy is Neil Jordan's tenth feature film and Geffen Pictures' final production. The film was released on DVD on February 13, 2007.
Ireland in the early 1960s. Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) is a 12-year-old boy whose imagination is fuelled by television --aliens, communists, the Atomic Age. [3] When his mother (Aisling O'Sullivan) suffers a nervous breakdown after having attempted suicide, he is left in the care of his father (Stephen Rea), a violent alcoholic. "Fascinated by gangsters, cowboys and Indians, comic-book monsters and the early-1960s threat of nuclear annihilation,"[4] Francie becomes a problem child, ending up at reform school. Here, he is brutalized by the other boys and molested by a priest (Milo O'Shea), finding solace only in his fantasies about a foul-mouthed saint (Sinéad O'Connor). He returns home to find both his parents dead and all ties to his past severed. His reaction to being left completely alone in the world is one of uncontrollable brutality, which shocks the provincial town he grew up in. [2]
The screen rights to the book were bought by Neil Jordan in 1992 during the filming of Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles.[3] The adaptation is mostly faithful to the novel, but there are some differences, the principal change being the ending. In the book, Francie is not seen to leave prison, and attempts to forge a friendship with an inmate similar to the one he had with Joe. In the film, a much older Francie is released from prison at the end to be brought to a halfway house. He picks a snowdrop, echoing the opening of the film.
Casting the child to play Francie was difficult. With no previous filming experiences, Eamonn Owens and Alan Boyle (who played Francie's best friend, Joe) were found at the local school in Killashandra in County Cavan where casting director Maureen Hughes went to visit her uncle. Owens' younger brother Ciaran was also cast. Sinéad O'Connor was cast by Neil Jordan because "she looks like the Virgin Mary."[3]
Adaptation
Patrick McCabe's accomplishment with The Butcher Boy was deemed unattainable in a film.[3][4] During the screenwriting process, author McCabe wrote two drafts that digressed from the original novel, like "planets within planets within planets" according to Neil Jordan, consequently, Jordan wrote the third draft that was more faithful to the novel. [3]
Neil Jordan captures Francie's schizophrenia by using voice-overs where the adult narrator Francie speaks with the child Francie. Andrew O'Hehir at Salon Entertainment criticizes Jordan and McCabe for an occasional "flavor of an after-school special purveying didactic lessons about abuse and victimization," and losing "the novel's Beckettian ambiguity." However, he argues that Jordan "brings a tenderness and sweetness" to the otherwise unforgiving subject matter.[4]
Reception
The reception of the film has been generally well. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes show a 79% rating and an average rating of 7.5/10.[5] Andrew O'Hehir at Salon Entertainment says "Neil Jordan's sweetly tragicomic movie" has "elaborate fantasy sequences [that] feel like irrelevant amusements." He also praises the film as "a compelling exploration of the permeable border between normal childhood and full-on insanity."[4] Jeffrey M. Anderson at Combustible Celluloid calls the film "a roller-coaster ride for your brain. It's the most alive and deeply-felt movie I've seen in 1998."[6]Emanuel Levy at Variety says it is "Neil Jordan's most accomplished and brilliant film to date."[5] As of August 2009 IMDB has given the movie a 7.1/10 user rating.
Eamonn Owens' performance was hailed unanimously; as such, he was awarded a Special Mention at the Berlin Film Festival in 1998.
The cumulative box office according to Variety is $1,963,654.[1]
Elliot Goldenthal composed the soundtrack for the film, which was released on CD in 1998. Goldenthal for this score mixes many different music genres and styles, yet this is one of his most melodic scores. The title song is performed by Sinéad O'Connor.
