The Devil's Playground
I understand that 1976's THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND is based on writer/director Fred Schepisi's experiences growing up in an isolated Catholic school/seminary in Australia. He was well into his thirties when this movie was written, but distressingly it plays as if his 13 year old self had commandeered the typewriter. Maybe that was the idea. I found this movie to be oh so obvious and didactic. Rarely sporting an insight above grade school level. A film that crams every idea relating to its central theme it can think of, then has the characters repeatedly comment on it. In a strange dichotomy, Schepisi's film exercises surprising restraint while meanwhile bombarding us with imagery that should've remained subtext. The film has several characters. Most of the focus is on Tom (Simon Burke), a model student who struggles with the same fleshly yearnings as his classmates and professors ("Brothers"), but largely manages to avoid falling prison...
