The Best Interest Of The Child-Pierce Brosnan’s “Evelyn” (2002)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Special Guest Reviewer Frankie Riley

Evelyn, Pierce Brosnan, Aidan Quinn   

Christ, I haven’t written a film review in so long, hell, any non-legal writing that I have almost forgot the talent existed in any form. You might as well know right now that I have been dragooned into do this review of Evelyn  by Greg Green the site manager here via the machinations of one Sam Lowell who I grew up with in the old Irish Catholic-dominated poor Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville south of Boston. The dragooned part comes in from the bright idea that Sam, who before his merciful retirement used to be the film editor here (and in the old days at American Film Gazette which is where Greg came from as well speaking of nepotism), that this film needed the gentile hand of a lawyer to work out. Of course Sam, Greg, and the whole non-lawyerly universe does not realize that being a lawyer in America does not give one some “cred” when speaking of foreign, in this case Irish Republican, read Holy Mother Church-etched law even though all derives from the bloody Mother English common law.

I might as well get to the dilemma here, the legal dilemma since it essentially is an early case of “the best interest of the child,” a legal doctrine that is followed in many places in place of the old standard that     

the state should take hands off except in extremis in the matter of the welfare of children in the care of their loving parents. Wish that sentiment were truer than to say it is so. Society have come a long way on that score and still have a long way to go but this film gives a small brush of what the stakes were ( an unintended pun since the main character, main adult character is a painter as they used to say by trade). Of course when you speak of Ireland in the old days, the post-independence from bloody Mother England days when the boyos, including a few of my grand uncles and cousins of advanced degree gave His Majesty all that he could handle and then some and then caved in to the damn clergy and dear Most Apostolic Mother Church , so you know where I am coming from days. Unlike today when the Catholic Church has lost some of it relentless grip on the population (witness the vote on same-sex couples tying the knot and the forthcoming close election on abortion rights which really will break the strangle hold if successful) half the damn Irish Constitution had the Church’s position on all aspects of social life embedded in it. While watching this film I kept returning to a feeling that I am blessed to be living in a secular republic whatever inroads that the religiously-oriented crowd running amok and their secular allies in America have made in my now long life time.

The crux of the legal matter here, ultimately the constitutional question, was whether an article of that blessed document concerned the fate of the children in family when one spouse deserts the family and the other is left holding the bag and is at the mercy of the state. The procedure before anything else in other words. The provision contested concerned wording that in order for the children to stay with one parent, here the father, that un-punned painterly father, the other spouse wherever he or she is must give consent. Weird. Weirder still was that as a result of this 1941 law many, many Irish children with one non-deceased spouse were thrown to the wolves of the Catholic Church run orphanages. It is only the past few years, maybe a decade now that the ugly truth of what happened physically, sexually and emotionally in those hell-holes has come to light. Some people, religious and secular, are going to roast in hell for a long time over their heinous actions against their charges.      

The storyline here, what Sam always called the skinny, centers on the family of one Desmond Doyle who will be the driving force behind the struggle to get his children back. His wife left him for parts unknown with another man, worse, worse in Ireland and in the Acre neighborhood too with a bloody Englishman, meaning that she was not findable in order to give her consent. This left Desmond, played by Irishman Pierce Brosnan last seen in this space according to Sam playing the epitome of English bravado as 007, you know James Bond in one of those endless sagas about how a single resourceful MI6 agent can keep the empire from falling to ground, with no recourse one a lower court determined that his personal and employment life were not good enough to keep the state from getting its grubby hands on the sweet children and turning them over to the hands of legerous priests and witchy, bitchy nuns who had no problem not sparing the rod on the child.

But Desmond seriously loves the little ones, loves his little princess Evelyn above all at least the time she is given in the film to develop a winsome character against the time given to her two younger brothers who seem to be able to blow with the winds. So, with the help of a good woman, speaking about winsome, a winsome woman, he gets two parts of his life back in order. He give up “the drink” as they used to say at his pub and at the old Dublin Grille in the Acre when somebody went on the wagon (my father for one although he battled the bottle all of his life, at least all of the life I knew of him before he ran off with some “shawlie” but that was when I was an adult and had my own marital problems). The winsome lass also puts him in touch with her brother, a solicitor, who in turn brings in a barrister who is the one who can actually try the case (and who as a sidebar is also smitten by that winsome lass and no one could blame him). This is where the Promethean uphill battle gets joined to try to get some freaking court to overturn the lower court judgment and let Desmond have his little ones back.

I would have to say in the 1950s when this legal case moved forward I would have bet against victory given the strong role of the Church on governmental officials and that lucrative slave labor orphanage racket (and the other part as well with slave labor unwed mothers to speak nothing of the pedophilia crimes -Jesus, yes the fires of hell will burn brightly for many a night when that crowd, state and church gets it comeuppance). But several things happened that helped the case along, a case which depended on angel rays in the end (which is also a title of one of the songs on the soundtrack). One was getting a solid law professor as an advisor who helped get publicity for Desmond’s case. Best of all (and I don’t know how this actually played out in the real case) Evelyn who deserved her title of the film honor blew the court away with her pleading honest child-like testimony. Case closed.