Boxoffice-September.1997

FEST REVIEWS: GALWAY, IRELAND
E
|p Incoming European correspondent TONY DEAN reports on the Galwayfestfrom Ireland.
THE BUTCHER BOY ••••
Starrinq Eamonn Owens, Alan
Boyle, Stephen Rea, Aisling
O'Sullivan, Fiona Show, Brendan
Gleeson and Ian Hart. Directed and
produced by Neil Jordan. Written
by Patrick McCable and Neil Jordan.
A Warner Bros, release.
Drama. Rated R for language and
violence. Running time: 109 min.
This may be an Irish-made movie with
local surroundings, but it could be set anywhere
in the wona. Based on a best-selling
novel by Patrick McCabe, "The Butcher
Boy" is set in a small Irish town in the 1 960s.
The cinema and radio are what keep the
locals going, and young Francie Brady is no
different than anyone else. A boy with a
fertile imagination, he listens to the adults as
they argue the ways of the world, in particular
the Cuban missile crisis.
Coming from a dysfunctional family (his
father is an alcoholic, his mother is a suicidal
manic-depressive), Francie is closest to
his school chum Joe. Life is best for him
when they act out the cowboy and Indian
games based on what they've read in
comic books. Living with a drunken father
and a mother who is forever preparing
cakes for the imminent arrival of 'Uncle
Alo" from London does not deter the cheerful
lad. Life gets cruel, however, and he
loses his father, mother and friend, which
leaves him insecure and threatened by his
adult surroundings. In order to get his own
back on the world, he takes his ariger out
on a snobbish neighbor who won'tlet her
son play with him; the fact that she dresses
in shock green makes him think she's like
one of the aliens in his comics.
Neil Jordan's 10th film is an extraordinary
piece of cinema. It features almost an
entire Irish cast, including Stephen Rea as
the father and Aisling O'Sullivan as the
mother; pop sinqer Sinead O'Connor appears
in the film s apparition sequences as
ttie Virgin Mary. Perhaps the most astounding
performer in the film is a youngster
named Eamonn Owens, who plays the
young boy. With no acting experience, he
was picked from 2,000 other hopefuls for
the part: Alan Boyle, who comes from the
same school, plays his paijoe to perfection.
This film gives life to the screen, capturing
an era long forgotten. And not only are the
performances stunning; so is Jordan's direction,
of the caliber that says "Oscar."
BOGWOMAN •••
Starring Peter Mullan and Sean
McGinley. Directed and written by
Tom Collins. Produced by Martha
O'Neill and Tom Collins. A De
Facto production; no stateside distributor
set. Drama. Not yet rated.
Running time: 80 min.
The Bogside in Derry, Northern Ireland
is
tfie setting for this striking movie about
the women of the area known worldwide
for "the trouisles." The film goes a long way
to explain the origins oFthe civil rights
movement: The setting is right before
Bloody Sunday, when many marchers for
Irish freedom were shot by British troops.
A woman goes back to her old home in
the country to see the lost of it as it's being
pulled down. Safe for the moment and
away from the troubled place in which
she now must live, she picks up a bulb
from the ground to bring back home with
her the feeling of having "roots."
A lot of the Irish question makes its way
into the plot as the old woman tells her
story; in between, the film shows different
aspects of life up north. Weil made and
acted, "Bogwoman" is a strong look at
the poiiticalsituation and the human condition
in Northern Ireland.
THE DISAPPEARANCE
OFFINBAR ifV2
Starring Jonathan Rhys-Myers,
Luke Griffin and Sean McGinley. Directed
by Sue Clayton. Written by
Sue Clayton and Dermot Bolger.
Produced by Martin Bruce-Clayton,
David Collms, Bertil Ohisson and
Soren Staemose. A Samson production;
no stateside distributor set.
Drama. Not yet rated.
Young Finbar comes from a
dilapidiated housing estate in the south of
the city; his father fiad little success with
his singing career, so he invests his energies
into his son. The lad gets a chance at
ecoming a footballer and is given a
hero's send-off by the community. Within
a month, he's back. He calls on his friend
Danny, who has always been there for
him, and in a moment of self-pity Finbar
falls from a bridge. Friends search for
him, but there is no trace of a body. After
months pass, a garbled phone call from
Stockholm to Danny gives the first clue as
to Finbar's whereabouts. Danny sets off to
find him, meeting up with all sorts of eccentric
characters who eventually lead
him to Lapland, where he finds our hero.
For almost an hour, moviegoers are
treated to the culture of Lapland and Stockholm.
Yet this could have been a silent film;
there is very little dialogue (most of what
there is in Scandinavian languages and
isn't subtitled, in any case), so audiences
ore left with little explanation why a local
girl beds Danny while all the men in the
village snigger. The film is beautiful, but
there's so much of that beauty and so little
going on plotwise that the movie almost
disappears like Finbar. Luke Griffin as
Danny holds the film together with his facial
expressions, ancTJonathan Rhys-
Myers as Finbar lights up the screen with
his presence. Except for that, however,
"The Disappearance of Finbar" has little to
keep patrons from making o similar exit.
FESTS
parts of a world that no longer exists to
make a documentary that manages to
illuminate a fascinating comer of humanity
while remaining witty fun.
Using film clips and interviews with the
era's technicians and stars (including two
identified as the Elvis and the Doris Day of
the East), "East Side Story" shows how
these musicals acted as both propaganda
and escapism for their audiences. Despite
the fact that the genre originated in Hollywood,
Stalin, it turns out, was its biggest
booster, supporting films that portrayed
cheerful workers harmonizing about the
while in reality his purges were
good life,
diminishing the flocks.
Meanwhile, films
like the 1958 East German hit "My Wife
Wants to Sing," in which a Mrs. Cleaver-ish
hausfrau becomes a glamorous performer,
thrilled audiences while offending communist
censors. The filmmakers parallel such
movies with Hollywood's lush-life musicals
of the Depression era, depicting a fantasy
world when reality was anything but.
The best part of "East Side Story" is that
it is copiously illustrated with kitschy excerpts
from films such as "Tractor Drivers"
(USSR, 1939), "I Don't Want to Marry"
(Romania, 1961) and "No Cheating Darling"
(East Germany, 1973), which give the
documentary its humor and energy. Seeing
a scene from East Germany's version of
"Beach Blanket Bingo"— 1968's "Hot
Summer"—with its Frankie and Annette
doppelgangers is kind of like climbing
through the looking glass. It's this delicious
sense of the bizarre that makes "East Side
Story" as suited to a midnight-movie marquee
as to an art-house.
FORGOTTEN LIGHT
••l/Z
Starring Boleslav Polivka and Veronika
Zilkova. Directed by Vladimir Michalek.
Written by Milena Jelinek. Produced by
Alice Nemanska, Jana Tomsova and Ivana
Kacirkova. A Studio Fama 92 production;
no stateside distributor set. Drama. Czechlanguage;
English subtitles. Not yet rated
Running time: 101 min. Won best actor
(Boleslav Polivka) and an audience award
The makers of "Forgotten Light"
("Zapomenute svetio") deal with recent
Czech past in this story of a beleaguered
village priest and a small group of parishioners
struggling to save their church in 1 987,
two years before the communists, with their
repressive religious policies, fell. Considering
its elements—a dying mother, a crisis
of faith, plus a flood and some fire—the
movie has surprisingly little power.
What it does have is a somber steadiness
and a cohesiveness. It also has the calmly
magnetic presence of Boleslav Polivka,
who (in a best-actor-winning performance)
plays denim-and-leather-clad Father Holy.
The film touches on the issue of members
of the Catholic hierarchy who collaborated
with the communists. The film's making
must be a release of sorts, given that its story
couldn' t be told even a decade ago. Still, the
main question "Forgotten Light" raises is:
Why this film now?