THE BOYS OF ST. VINCENT Movie Review
A two-part, three-and-a-half hour film originally made for Canadian television, The Boys of St. Vincent is based on an actual case in which scores of children were abused for years in a Catholic orphanage. Legal proceedings started by those accused in the actual case were successful in delaying its broadcast, but the complete film surfaced at the 1993Telluride Film Festival, where critics and festivalgoers were overpowered by the electrifying performance of Henry Czerny as the monstrous Brother Peter Lavin. Molesting little boys like clockwork and then terrorizing all the children into keeping quiet when police finally investigate, Lavin is portrayed not as the usual, pathetic, multi-sided, tortured soul who wants someone to stop him, but as a consummately evil, arrogant monster, believing himself to be fully above the laws of god and man. It's a great performance, and Czerny never lets it get away from him. As the swaggering, arrogant tyrant who enjoyed lording over his little boys in a Newfoundland orphanage in 1975, he's right up there with the great movie monsters, but vastly more alarming. He's equally impressive in the more demanding second half, set 15 years after the molestations, when Lavin—now married with sons of his own—is finally going to be tried for his crimes and is furious to find himself backed into a corner and running out of lies. The cumulative impact of this picture gets to you, and it feels—appropriately—like an ordeal. Never released to commercial theatres in the U.S. (only non-profit theatres were licensed to exhibit it), it did play in a cut version on cable, and was eventually aired in its entirety by the CBC.
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1993 186m/C CA Henry Czerny, Johnny Morina, Sebastian Spence, Brian Dodd, David Hewlett, Jonathan Lewis, Jeremy Keefe, Phillip Dinn, Brian Dooley, Greg Thomey, Michael Wade, Lise Roy, Timothy Webber, Kristine Demers, Ashley Billard, Sam Grana; D: John N. Smith; W: Sam Grana, John N. Smith, Des Walsh; C: Pierre Letarte; M: Neil Smolar. Nominations: Independent Spirit Awards ‘95: Best Foreign Film. VHS NYF