Posted: 03/25/2002

Borstal Boy

(2002)

by Bryce J. Tache

A humdrum boy-loves-boy-loves girl story.

I admit it: Until seeing Borstal Boy, I didn’t have a clue what a borstal was. I thought it had something to do with beet soup, some spelling variation that I should have learned in junior high. Going in, I didn’t know anything about Borstal Boy except that it was homoerotic, what with all the shirtless-boy ads the film’s distributor had run in the local gay rags the last few weeks. What soup had to do with boys doing boys, I wasn’t sure, but I was eager to find out. Even the word borstal seemed kind of naughty. Say it three times and you’ll see what I mean.

A few minutes into the movie, I learned that a borstal is a British reform school for delinquent boys. Reform schools are much hotter than dollops of sour cream floating around in red bowls, to be sure. Borstals aren’t around anymore but back in World War II, Brendan Behan, a 16-year-old Irish soldier, was sent to one in England for 18 months, and that’s what this movie is about.

Borstal Boy is apparently inspired by (as opposed to based upon) true events. The young Behan was an IRA soldier trained in explosives. He went to England to blow some things up. His training must have been inadequate because after about two seconds in England, he was caught and sent to the borstal. None of this would be of any interest if Behan hadn’t grown up to be a big-time writer and even bigger drunk.

But Borstal Boy isn’t about a writer and his art. And it’s not about the bottle. I don’t know what it is about, exactly, nor does the movie’s director. But more on that later. I’m not familiar with Behan’s writing and since I have no way of comparing fact (the real Behan’s life) and fiction (the movie Behan’s life), I’ll just stick to the fiction the movie provides.

Brendan Behan (Shawn Hatosy) isn’t very happy when he finds himself in reform school. He’s stuck with the enemy but the place could be worse. The kindly headmaster (Michael York, Basil Exposition in the Austin Powers movies) believes the boys will respect authority if he respects them. He prefers lectures to beatings and makes everyone wear wool sweaters, short trousers and knee-high black socks. (J.Crew fetishists, take note.)

Let’s get to the other boys. Charlie Milwall (Danny Dyer, a sexier Josh Hartnett) is a gay sailor who forms a crush on Behan. Behan is straight, but boys being boys, well…one thing leads to another. Milwall is openly gay, it seems, but none of the other boys seem to care (this is 1940 rural England?) except for one nasty kid who is in for rape. I couldn’t tell you any of the other boys’ names because they speak about two lines each and look awfully alike. One’s a Jew. One’s a Canadian. One’s kind of funny. And don’t forget about that mean one, he’ll become important towards the end.

Even while Behan explores his homo side with Milwall, he’s falling in love with Liz, the headmaster’s daughter (Eva Birthistle). Liz is an artist and I’m not too sure about this, but she might be the one who gets Behan to be a writer. At the very least, she introduces him to Oscar Wilde and faster than you can say “pouf,” boys are running around in skirts and wigs.

Not much happens, really. The boys box and play rugby and a couple of them die in a scene that carries remarkably little emotional weight. This is the type of movie where people die in slow motion, by the way, and somber music plays just when something bad is about to happen. In between the sports and deaths and clichés, Behan has to choose between the sailor and the girl. Like so many films before it, Borstal Boy goes for the tragic gay ending.

We never learn why Behan writes or how he discovered his talent. We don’t get a chance to understand his political beliefs. We don’t learn anything about him at all except that he stutters and broods. Why does this boy grow up to be a miserable alcoholic? Director Peter Sheridan doesn’t seem to care.

This is Sheridan’s directing debut. I guess he has a theater background. Unlike other theater directors who have impressively made the transition to film (i.e., Sam Mendes, Julie Taymor), Sheridan doesn’t seem to know what to do with the camera. The movie lacks a visual style, the pacing is poor and there is little sense of place or time.

Borstal Boy was produced by Peter Sheridan’s brother, Jim, whose directing credits include My Left Foot and The Boxer. Those movies, however melodramatic, knew what they wanted to say. They weren’t afraid to dig around in the muck of human emotions. Borstal Boy, on the other hand, is too staid, too careful. It lacks humor and worse, for a film with a love triangle at its center, it lacks even one erotic moment.

I suppose Borstal Boy was made to please straight audiences who might have been uncomfortable with anything more than a man-to-man kiss. In Ireland, that one scene might be brave but I was desperate for some sparks, some passion for life or the written word or the windswept countryside or even knee-high socks. Instead, we get a movie about as exciting as a bowl of cold soup on a winter’s day.

Bryce J. Tache is a freelance writer from Chicago who likes his soup hot, preferably with homemade croutons.

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