A thrilling alternative to all the overhyped summer blockbusters, ”Boy A” is the best film I have seen this year. A work of art challenges us to rethink all of our prejudices and preconceptions. Audiences who join director John Crowley and the splendid actors on this journey to the dark side will come out deeply moved and fired to debate the movie for hours afterward.
Astutely written by Mark O’Rowe (from a novel by Jonathan Trigell), the story begins with Jack (Andrew Garfield) being released from juvenile prison. A concerned caseworker, Terry (Peter Mullan), helps him to get established in a new home and new job. Flashbacks fill in some of Jack’s childhood history leading up to the shocking crime that sent him to prison.
Crowley has worked primarily in the theater in Ireland and England, but he understands how to tighten the screws as the story builds remorselessly toward its shattering conclusion. Jack forms new friendships and even begins a romance with a co-worker, Michelle (Katie Lyons). Feeling like something of a fraud, he wants to confess his full history to Michelle, but Terry wisely urges him to keep his past secret. Ironically, it is through an act of kindness that his secret is finally revealed. When Jack rescues a young girl trapped in an automobile after an accident, the media descend on him and celebrate him as a hero. All the publicity uncovers his past crime, and friends turn against him with a vengeance.
Only a few films have touched on similar themes. Film buffs may remember a 1961 film called “The Mark,” which earned an Oscar nomination for Stuart Whitman as a child molestor trying to start a new life. In that movie Whitman was guilty in thought but not in deed. In “Boy A” it’s clear that Jack, egged on by a more troubled friend, did participate in the murder of a young girl. The film does not show the killing, and we’re left to wonder if Jack was merely an accomplice or an active participant. But we do see him picking up a knife before the attack, and so it’s impossible to let him off the hook.
The film raises profound questions about guilt and expiation. Are some crimes unforgivable? Certainly in our gun-loving, death penalty-addicted society, many people would answer that question in the affirmative. But the film’s more humanistic vision suggests that people can be redeemed even after the most shocking offenses. “Boy A” enumerates all the mitigating factors that led Jack to fall under the influence of a sociopathic friend, and it insists that people have the capacity to change. Yet it never excuses the horrific act that Jack committed. It has the grace to allow viewers to come to their own conclusion, trusting that compassion will trump blood lust.
If we do finally decide that Jack deserves forgiveness, that is partly a tribute to the superb performance by Garfield. This magnetic, open-faced actor (who played one of the students in Robert Redford’s “Lions for Lambs”) surely has a great future in film. He burrows deep inside this troubled young man to capture his fear, ingenuousness, and desperate longing to be understood and absolved. The gruff but caring Mullan helps to guide our response. Alfie Owen and Taylor Doherty also give remarkable performances as the two young boys in the flashbacks. Crowley’s precise, unsentimental direction encourages our compassion without bludgeoning us into submission. An image of the two boys seated in the courtroom, their feet unable to touch the floor, crystallizes with unbearable poignancy the inappropriateness of judging children like adult criminals.
The bleak ending offers no easy comfort for the audience, which means that the film may never conquer the box office. But if one definition of tragedy is a work that evokes pity and terror, then “Boy A” must be considered a transcendent emotional experience. In a summer of mindless violence, how bracing to discover a film that acknowledges the devastating repercussions of violence for both victim and perpetrator.