Song for a Raggy Boy (2003)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a companion piece to the film The Magdalene Sisters, but is more brutal, and also more beautiful. Not for the squeamish, this work of art is a fantastic example of why we have film as an art form and as a way to bring light to social injustices. There are countless holy people--true saints--who have found Jesus through various Christian constructs such as Roman Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and a wide variety of Protestant versions. However, for the most part those involved in maintaining the structures themselves are not Christlike at all, but demonic. Jesus promises that if anyone hurts one of his little ones, it is better that a millstone is tied around his neck and that he is then thrown into the sea. Maybe it's just me, but I never want to be on the other end of that warning. It's really too bad that there are those who do find themselves there, hiding their evil behind self-righteousness.

Yesterday we saw this brilliant movie on a Spanish TV channel with the original sound-track and subtitles as a possibility we used as Irish is a quite difficult form of English. The Spanish Civil War did not only cause an almost 40 year dictatorship of Franco but also an agreement with the Vatican. The results of this type of agreement ('Concordat') could be seen in this film. A human being like the Prefecto Brother John would - in normal circumstances - be judged as a straightforward criminal. The soft way in which Liam Mercier tried to learn a bit from his teacher what 'love' means belongs to the best parts of this film.The strong and dangerous hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church - based on the Hitlerian 'Befehl ist Befehl' - has seldom been shown so clearly as in this masterpiece movie. The best teacher fought in the Spanish Civil War and did not hesitate to call the cruel murdering of Liam Mercier as a crime and nothing else. When he decided to leave this 'Reformatorio', his own pupils stopped him from doing it in a way he had taught them to love good poetry. Het only got real help from the director of the school, an honest man who had to live under horrible circumstances and had already stopped the layman-teacher once. 'We need you here' were his words.I passed with my Spanish/Catalan wife an eye-opening evening and have learned more than in any film about the danger of Catholic dualism.The movie deserves a 10 and I hope many people are going to see the movie. Then they will also notice the cleverly hidden discrimination that lives in the Roman Catholic way of what is called faith.

Late last night I was watching Foxtel and I came across Song For A Raggy Boy. This movie shook me so hard that I could cry at the drop of a hat. I have no idea why this movie would rattle me more than most other movies I have seen recently - there are far more graphic and shocking movies than this. But the cruelty of the violence coupled with the students' passion and hope (as well as the inspiring school teacher) left me to turn off the TV and sit in complete darkness for what felt like hours, literally trembling.Also, as a result, I shall forever look upon Ian Glen as The Sadist Headmaster Who Thrashed The Kids Senseless. He was almost TOO good in this role. Aidan Quinn, however, has proved himself once again to be a fine actor, worthy of much more acclaim than he has received. He's not an A-lister, by any means, but he has an art, an impeccably developed craft. He blew me away in Two Of Us and...well, if I wore a hat, i'd take it off to you.

A film in a typical vein to such offerings as Angela's Ashes, Liam and The Leaving of Liverpool. Fantastic performances from an unknown cast of boys, with the stern influence of Ian glen & Marc Warren as the priests. Aidan Quinn is always fantastic, but here excels himself in a performance up there with that in Michael Collins. The film is tough to watch, with many scenes evoking actual rage at what is going on on the screen. The ritualistic violence, which the boys are forced to watch is particularly gruesome. An emotional roller-coaster of a film is compounded with the bleak pen - pics of what happened to the characters after the film, the reading of which leaves a lump in the throat. One small criticism, would be the glaring stereotypes which, at times, threaten to undermine what is a great piece of cinema. Salivating Priests who skulk in the shadows waiting for the boys to do wrong, along with the old cliche of the one picked on boy overcoming all odds to persuade the teacher to stay, is a little bit too neatly packaged for a film that did not need to end on a high. Overall though, definitely worth a watch.