The Butcher Boy

Please note: the September 9th screening will take place in the Bartos Screening Room.

Dir. Neil Jordan. 1997, 110 mins. 35mm. With Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Eamonn Owens, Allen Boyle, Aisling O’Sullivan, Brendan Gleeson, Sinéad O’Connor. Jordan’s adaptation of Patrick McCabe’s 1994 novel (the two co-wrote the script) is a fevered, uncompromising work of sui generis cinema that’s equal parts rollicking coming-of-age tale and slow-burn psychological horror story. Red-headed tweener Francie Brady (the extraordinary Owens) is a troublemaking deviant in the Dennis the Menace mold—if Dennis were raised impoverished in a working-class Irish town by an alcoholic father and mentally unwell mother, overly attached to his diminutive best friend (Boyle), and a violent sociopath. Amidst an early 1960s milieu of rampant unemployment, Cold War terror, and strict Catholic school indoctrination, Francie’s rebellions at first seem understandable, until the circumstances of his life—and the manifestations of his impulses—start to veer out of control. In one of her few screen appearances as an actor, Sinéad O’Connor plays Francie’s hallucinated vision of a sympathetic (and foul-mouthed) Virgin Mary, a deliciously arch bit of casting that she inhabits with aplomb.

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members at the Senior/Student level and above ($7–$11). Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission. Review safety protocols before your visit.