A classic Irish movie, The Butcher Boy is set in a small town in Ireland in the mid part of the twentieth century. It tells the story of Francis 'Francie' Brady, a schoolboy who lives with his mother and alcoholic father. In the early part of the book it becomes apparent that Francie's mother is abused both verbally and physically by her belligerent husband, on a frequent basis. Francie's father, Benny, was raised in a tough religious school in Belfast, and it is suggested that this experience left him mentally traumatised. This mental trauma has left Benny bitter... and angry, and he takes this anger out on his wife, his fury fuelled by alcohol. Francie's mother considers suicide and is committed for a time to a mental health facility. [show more]
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Young Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens) grows up in a small Irish town in the 1960s. His father Benny (Stephen Rea) is a drunk, while his ma has to be carted off to the local asylum after a breakdown. Francie finds solace with his best friend Joe, but a tragic chain of circumstances is set in motion when the boys begin to terrorize their studious classmate, Phillip Nugent. Phillip's mother calls Francie's family 'pigs', and Francie becomes obsessed with making her life a misery, estranging himself from Joe in the process.
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 neighbour, 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 behaviour, 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.
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