DVD Pick of the Week - The Butcher Boy
Diiiisgusting boy!
The Butcher Boy
Mere moments into Neil Jordan’s 1997 ultra-black comedy The Butcher Boy, we know it’s going to get ugly - “…on account of what I done to Mrs.Nugent,” says Francie Brady, the young Irish lad at the center of Patrick McCabe’s award-winning novel and Jordan’s film. He doesn’t elaborate, and frankly that’s fine because we’ll get to the gory details in due time. Jordan is an accomplished director with loads of range, yet for my dollar The Butcher Boy is definitely his most underrated film, a character study about just what makes a murderer – a child murderer, no less – that is pure cinema for every surreal, uncomfortable, hilarious and brazen minute. Tuesday’s release is the first time it’s available on DVD, including a director’s commentary and deleted scenes.
The key to riding Jordan’s unpredictable wave is coming to terms with our unreliable narrator. Francie – an astonishing performance by Eamonn Owens, then just thirteen and channeling a charismatic menace worthy of Cagney – is not only unreliable, but certainly crazy; we can never really know how much of the story really happened as told, or is colored by Francie’s insanity, brought on largely by anguish over his depressive mum and alcoholic dad or the intrusive cruelty of their nosy neighbor, the doomed Mrs. Nugent. Stylistically the film bounces from satire to horror with unnerving ease, but never fails to engage our emotions and make us feel for the little terror, even as he manipulates everyone around him including the clergy, the ladies down at the grocers, the doctors in the loony bin and the blessed Virgin herself. (Sinead O’Connor as Francie’s “vision” of Mary may be stunt casting, but it’s also brilliant.) While it’s doubtlessly not everyone’s cup of tea, The Butcher Boy is guaranteed to get a reaction; whether emerging from it enthralled or aghast – or both – you’ll be alive for those 109 minutes. Which is more than we can say for Mrs. Nugent.
Other recommended titles for February 13th: Beauty And the Beast: Season One; The Departed: Special Edition; Half Nelson; Performance; Reno 911!: Most Wanted; The US vs. John Lennon
—Nicole Campos
