Absolution (1988)

"Absolution" is a film that has somehow faded into the public domain. So, if you are interested in seeing it, you can download it for free from archive.org. Often IMDb links to this site but in this case, oddly, it has not.The film is set at a Catholic boarding school. An incredibly humorless priest, Father Goddard (Richard Burton) teaches Latin at the school and in most of his dealings with the students, he's a nasty and cold man. He's so cold that he naturally breeds contempt in some of his students. And, this coldness and inflexibility will eventually be his undoing.In the course of his work, Father Goddard has also managed to alienate a stranger--a drifter and a bit of a rogue (Billy Connelly). Instead of showing the love of God, Goddard is cold and dismissive of the man. However, because he does treat this man so poorly as well as students, one of the boys finds a kindred spirit in this drifter. They become friends and the boy starts sneaking out at night to spend time with the guy. Where does all this lead? Well, certainly NOT where you'd expect it to go!!! The film turns out to be a dandy suspense film--and one that kept me guessing many times. It's very interesting and worth seeing though I have one reservation. While the teens playing the students were pretty good actors, occasionally Burton seemed to overact. I know, he's well respected by many, but here he did seem to overdo it just a bit. By the way, another part that didn't come off well was the violent scene involving a shovel to the head. However, I would say that although it looked fake, I am happy it wasn't more graphic!

Not only is Absolution a hard movie to find, but it also very slow moving. The acting is great and the story is great, but the director could have tried something to liven it up. All script writing books will tell you to put the first action and get the ball rolling about ten to fifteen minutes into the film, whereas in the case of Absoution, you go about halfway through the movie and realize the plot started half an hour before.Absolution focuses on two students in a catholic school, one named Benji (Dominic Guard) and one Dyson (David Bradley). Benji is the golden boy of the school who is good at everything from sports to class, Dyson on the other hand is crippled and not too good at anything. When Father Goddard (Richard Burton) hears Benji's confession that he killed a homeless drifter named Blakey (Billy Connoly) then investigates only to find a buried scarecrow he doesn't take the next report of Blakey's murder very seriously, but this time discovers Blakey's corpse. When Goddard receives another confession that Benji has killed Dyson, he drives himself mad looking for the body until finally killing Benji, only to discover that Dyson, jealous of Benji's abilities and the favoritism shown to Dyson by Goddard, had been impersonating Benji in the confessions.also I believe that Richard Burton's performance was great but you can't overlook Billy Connoly who is a great comedian and great actor of any genre.

Yes, I guess the movie is hard to sit through till the end but as I was watching it all by myself minus distractions I think the movie is good. Richard Burton's acting can be coolly incandescent (Huh? Cool but incandescent? Yes, that is really what I meant) although he leaned towards theatrical dialog and body acting especially towards the few minutes of the film, otherwise, I liked the movie for its storytelling. Perhaps you may really find it boring if your idea of a movie is three-million polygons of hair and fur rendered with subsurface scattering algorithms. Ack!But I really love the claustrophobic feeling of an all-boys catholic school the movie is trying to capture. I can relate to the interminably boring sessions of sitting thru your Latin textbook translations (Spanish in our case) and endless hours of conjugating all those verbs (AMOS, AMAS, AMAMOS, AMAIS). But what really bothers me is the parochial drift of the plot. It is so narrow that at the end you get the feeling that you are watching a made-for-TV movie. But, hey, this is Richard Burton. They could have given the movie a little more room to breathe. I think they have overdone this claustrophobic statement a bit too far in this movie. But, overall, this is tolerable and better than most movies out there.

I don't think anyone can really like this movie. It doesn't do things in a different strange way which is good. But the movie is just so boring, and you are waiting for it to be over. The acting really isn't that bad, but you don't care about that when your watching it. I give it a 1 1/2 out of 5.