A Christian Brother slams another door when Angela brings the boy to apply for a scholarship. Likewise, the schoolmasters are routinely cruel, but they're the ones who provide Frank with a love of literature as well as hope of redemption. It's education, not religion, that will save him. One denounces a class system that keeps a higher education out of reach of poor kids. This being an Irish movie, there's plenty of humor to soften the hardness, as in the improbable escapade when young Frank vomits up God himself on the morning of his First Communion.
Verbal pyrotechnics abound.
Frank himself uses his growing gift for language to write dunning letters for the evil money-lender, picking up pence to fund his fixed idea of coming to America. Old World Bad. The tragedy of the McCourts lies not just in Malachy's failures to his family, but in the indifference of their communities on both sides of the sea. Feature Shock - Suggested viewing for the new century. Tucson Weekly .