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 prisoner to it.   Some of his chums are involved in a secret society of sadomasichism and homosexuality.  Some of the brothers even get their hands very close to the fire, as when one downs enough ale to almost engage in a threesome with a couple of good time gals in a bar.  Or the real staid one who is quick to rebuke student and colleague alike (even making sure the kids leave their underwear on when they shower), yet peeks at women at the public swimming pool.  At least he retreats to a bathroom stall to weep about it.  Expectedly, no one escapes the patented guilt. 

Schepisi, whose direction is fine, really wants to thoughtfully examine the seeming futility, the grossly unnatural decision to deny one's sexuality to live a life devoted to ministry.  He succeeds in moments, and never results to exploitation or needless vulgarity.  I was half expecting this to be a junior version of Ken Russell's THE DEVILS; quite thankfully I was mistaken.  But the director simply doesn't trust us to understand his points without near continuous discourse and soul baring among its characters.  If  THE DEVIL'S PLAYGROUND had intimated more and exposited less we might've had an effective little study of the enormity of faith and self sacrifice.  

As it is, it feels like the cinematic equivalent of Cliffs Notes.  Or if Jenny Fields from THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP had written a new tome about lust and the brotherhood.