It's excruciating to watch, and it takes time to recover from the images in "Song for a Raggy Boy," an Irish film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this week. But the first step toward righting a historical wrong is to face it, say "Song's" filmmakers.
In thousands of cases, parents who couldn't control or care for their sons sent them away to reformatory schools, which until the mid-1980s subjected the students to brutality in the name of discipline. "Song" is about Mr. Franklin, the only lay teacher at a Jesuit-run school for preteen and teen boys.
Aidan Quinn, the actor whose own boyhood was split between Ireland and the United States, plays Mr. Franklin. He and director Aisling Walsh came to Park City to answer questions about their film, which is based on a true story.
In the picture, two Irish Jesuits — not fictitious characters — physically, mentally and sexually abuse their students until Mr. Franklin intervenes. The story is about how he, a mentally wounded veteran of the Spanish Civil War and a man the Jesuits call a "God-hating communist," is the first teacher to show the boys real mercy.
Watching the religious brothers' cruelty, "you don't want to believe it. When you hear about it, you have to deal with it, and dealing with it is extremely painful," Quinn said. But until about 20 years ago, the mistreatment was widespread in the Irish reformatory system.
The abuse had to be shown graphically in the film "because that is what happened," Walsh added.
"Song for a Raggy Boy" is obviously a timely story, with the Catholic Church entering another year of struggle with cases of clerical sexual abuse and authority that, until recently, went unchallenged. But the film is still seeking a distributor. It may be a while before one comes forward. This is a troubling movie, to say the least, with a tragic ending. There is, however, a gleam of hope, in the eyes of Mr. Franklin and the surviving boys.
Quinn, for his part, hopes that audiences will be moved to think about how no church or government institution is a monolith. Such organizations are made up of divergent individuals — some who are gentle, some who are evil and a few who summon the courage to challenge the authorities.
Quinn had a family member who was a Jesuit and a kind soul; he has a devout Catholic aunt who devoted her life to working for the poor. "I also had a Christian brother," a teacher in his Irish primary school, "who beat me senseless. And this was in the '70s."
In "Song," Father Damian (Alan Devlin) and Brother Tom (Dudley Sutton) are two Jesuits who treat the boys like humans. They hope Mr. Franklin's arrival at the school will somehow change the atmosphere. But even though Brother Tom and Father Damian are well aware of the viciousness of the other Jesuits, neither man tries to stop it. Ultimately the abusive clerics are sent away: one to the Catholic Church's African missions, the other to the United States where, according to the film, he still lives.
Walsh said two stories compelled her to make the film: Patrick Galvin's novel "Song for a Raggy Boy," and the firsthand account from a longtime friend. When she was 16, Walsh became acquainted with the friend, who had spent years in what amounted to a prison. Many of his fellow inmates had committed only minor offenses such as shoplifting.
"Survivors have just started to come forward and tell their stories," Walsh said. "Everyone over the age of 30 will remember these places . . . They were a constant threat during my childhood when I misbehaved."
Walsh's father also inspired her as a filmmaker, "to stand up and say what needs to be said."
The movie also depicts a miraculous kind of resilience. Mr. Franklin allows the boys in his class to design and build a Christmas Nativity scene, and they rise to the job with enthusiasm. Delaney, a student who is suffering sexual abuse from one of the Jesuits, blossoms as he takes the lead on the project. The scene occupies a place of honor, alongside the altar at Christmas Eve Mass. Afterward, the boys go outside with Mr. Franklin, and a light snow starts to fall. Mr. Franklin gives each of his students small gifts. That night, they seem set free.
The reformatory school damaged boys on every level, Quinn said. But one teacher can open their eyes to a gentler side of the world. "It was very important to me to get that across. We've all had a teacher in our lives who made a difference. Some of us have had one or two teachers like that, maybe three if we were lucky."
In hope of penetrating the boys' hardening shells, Mr. Franklin teaches them to read Irish literature. Delaney, who is barely able to read aloud, struggles with the Eva Gore-Booth poem assigned to him:
The peaceful night that round me flows/Breaks through your iron prison doors/Free through the world your spirit goes/Forbidden hands are clasping yours/The wind is our confederate/The night has left the doors ajar/We meet beyond earth's barred gate/Where all the world's wild rebels are.
Likewise, the teacher helps the boys escape their own prison doors, in the lines of verse. Mr. Franklin was able to get through to his students because "he wasn't quick to anger. He was patient; he let them have their rebellion," and then, said Quinn, he urged them back to their lessons.
The young actors who played the students weren't actually actors before filming began. Several were found at Irish boxing gyms — and after they had been working on the set for a while, they turned into actors. In one scene that required a 9-year-old to start crying at the sight of his brother being whipped, the young actor did it without prompting from the director. "He took the leap," Quinn recalled — and the rest of the boys, in a convergence of empathy, began weeping, just as the script dictated. "He caused this incredible alchemy," Quinn said.
Chris Newman, who played Delaney, is seen in one of the film's most harrowing scenes when his character is abused by Brother Mac (Marc Warren). Quinn said the boy had to convince his mother that this is a story that needed to be told, and that he had a role to play in the telling. "He said to her, 'It's only acting. It's not happening to me,' " Quinn recalled.
The reformatory schools were taken over by the Irish department of health in 1984, and accounts steadily spread about their abuse and murder of thousands of students.
"We all let (the abuse) go on," Quinn said. "It becomes a conspiracy of silence," a silence he hopes "Song for a Raggy Boy" will help to end.
E-mail: durbani@desnews.com