Word: lavin
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YOUNG KEVIN REEVEY HAS RUN away from St. Vincent's orphanage in Newfoundland, and when the police bring him back, Brother Peter Lavin, who runs the place, is there waiting. Full of forgiveness, the clergyman brings Kevin into his study and sits the boy on his lap. "You're home now, child," he says, kissing Kevin's cheek, his neck, his bare chest. His passion spilling into parental devotion, he whispers, "Mama loves you." Finally Kevin dares to mutter, "My mother's dead and always will be. You're not my mother." Poor little fellow, he must be punished-flogged...
...John N. Smith and Sam Grana), directed (by Smith) and acted with a dreadful delicacy that subtly exposes both the sickness of the abusers and the beauty of the abused. But when the film plays next Sunday and Monday on cable's A&E network, that extraordinary scene between Lavin and Kevin will have been trimmed, as will a few others. Apparently, U.S. viewers lack the sophistication of their northern neighbors. The cutting of these scenes is nearly the artistic equivalent of Lavin's crimes. It is abuse under the pretext of protecting sensitive souls...
What's left is still shocking. For in the film's first half, set in the 1970s, we see Lavin and his colleagues misuse their authority as teachers, surrogate parents, men of God. They instruct these utterly dependent children in their catechism. They impose discipline with a belt buckle, their faces hinting at the pleasure they take in their power. At night they show their tender side, with sweet murmurs and a hand under a boy's bed sheets...
...thing about The Boys (a work of fiction inspired by several real cases of Canadian children abused by Catholic clergy) is not the statement it makes but the questions it raises. The agony of young Kevin (bravely played by Johnny Morina) finds its evil twin in the torment of Lavin (a brilliantly implosive turn by Henry Czerny). Here is a man isolated in his lust and duty; years later he says to a psychiatrist, "I'm not afraid of you. I'm afraid...
Just as Smith so acutely mapped the emotions of the young orphans in their faces, so too is he able to convey the interior psychological experience of Lavin's wife. The therapy sessions of Lavin--his substitute for the confession he never made during his reign of terror over St. Vincent--also stand as a complex tool in probing the introspective experiences of each character involve, as well as dissecting the soul and source of brutality...