My, those Norwegians can be a dour and scary lot! This movie based on a true story is set in Bastoy
a reform school set on a remote island, which is like Alcatraz, but for
kids. The place is where ‘maladjusted’
boys aged 11 to 18 are ‘sensible and forcibly turned into useful Christian
boys’ i.e. they are beaten and bullied and treated unmercifully until their
spirit breaks.
Bestyreren, the school’s fierce and pious governor is
the supreme overload of a cruel and heartless system that hands out harsh punishments
for breaking any of his stringent rules such as talking at meals.
One day two new boys are brought to Bastoy, one labeled
by the school as C19 who had allegedly murdered someone and he is determined to be the
first person ever to escape the bleak imposing island, which seems to be
covered in heavy snow all year. It’s his
story (hence the film's title) that is the focus of the movie but his unlikely friendship with C1 the
Dorm Leader empowers C1 to release his own fury at the unjust system just before
he is about to get his freedom and thus starts the beginning of the end.
The camaraderie between the boys is the redeeming part
of an inhuman system that is intended to crush them, and how by the sheer nature of
how they defend each other, shows more far more humanity than any of their
sanctimonious bullying masters. In the
end it’s the boys who are pushed too far and they take over their prison-like
school, and it takes the whole might of the Norwegian Army to repel them.
The interaction between boys and governor makes for
compelling viewing because a forbidding and scary Stellan Skarsgard plays the
unrelenting Bestyreen so brilliantly. He so excels at playing rigid and
hard-hearted characters that seem as unrelenting and unwelcoming as the bleak
landscape itself.
This rather imposing and immensely watchable movie follows other sadly true stories that
uncover the abuse of children/teenagers by upright Christian people in recent
history such as ’The Magdalene Sisters’, ‘Oranges and Sunshine’, and all are good witness of these very troubled times lest we should
forget.
★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★
