Disco Pigs

When I saw this movie for the first time, I liked it a lot, but was still on the fence of "greatness". Lots of good things happened but I wasn't sure if it added up to a full meal of a film.

HOW WRONG I WAS.

I still had questions and popped it back in the next day and I can honestly say that this is the most romantic and touching film I have seen. Ever.

Yes its horrible, ugly, violent, brutal and painful to watch at many points but here is why it hit me like wrecking ball.

The story sets the two leads as friends of the highest caliber, being so close that a sort of hazy psychic bond has formed (although I like to think they don't really seem to notice/care, it just is). They in actuality are two halves of the same person, Pig being the voice, strength, and ego of the person. Runt is the other half consisting of the thought, rational and id. When they become separated, the calmer thinker deals better with others than the brash speaker. I feel that these points are clearly brought forth in the liquor store scenes where Runt literally calls him off the poor clerk, yet until Pig went too far, she was smiling at and enjoying the brutal scene. When something this unifying clashes with puberty, sexuality, society, coming-of-age, and separation they act out only as a person can. Neither of them are acting crazy or differently. This is all they know.

Other comments are very wrong when they say that Runt has feelings for the bartender or her roommate. Her feelings of love and devotion to Pig are always there, NEVER wavering for a moment. But shes learned to cope with the world should it become an issue to them, where as Pig has not.

Were I to be in the same relationship with someone that was that deep, that intense, I know that I would not hesitate to do anything Pig did. I dont believe in violence in any way shape or form either, I just know that what they have isn't temporary of fleeting. Hes not fighting to hurt people, he is literally fighting for his life. This depth of this notion of love is shockingly brilliant and really impressed me.

The end is the only sort of ending that could happen. Their love has become something so passionate and uncontrollable that it cant work in our world. No one would understand.

Personally, I don't understand why people have said this movie is so bad. It is fair to say that maybe sometimes the things Pig (Cillian Murphy) says are a bit much and put a downside on the movie but I've heard much worse in other, highly rated, movies. The storyline itself is a simple yet interesting and well thought out one which has a fantastic ending. If you do begin to watch this movie and dislike it it is still worth watching to the end and may perhaps change your view of it a little. This is the kind of movie people will usually either love or hate. Some will find it horrible and others will find it somewhat romantic and very good. Rather than reading comments that slate it and taking that view yourself you should definitely watch it and make your own mind up.

Pig (Cillian Murphy) loves Runt (Elaine Cassidy) and Runt loves Pig. This has been true since their shared birth date, and their love excludes all the rest of creation. This idyllic love is immortal, eternal... at least for a while.

Pig and Runt are childlike teens approaching adulthood, at least physically. Mentally, they are what they have always been, two children lost in each other. Then, one day, Pig sees Runt in a new and different way. Suddenly, she's no longer the girl he's grown up with. She's a beautiful, desirable woman. From here, the relationship begins to change.

Pig is ill-equipped to deal with the emotions that overwhelm him. The crazy innocence of youth is being replaced by something else. Something dangerous, even deadly.

DISCO PIGS is a tragic, obsessive love story, similar in vein to HEAVENLY CREATURES. Both films concern an all-consuming love that blots out all else. Both are among the few "love stories" I can bear watching. Both are astonishing...

Disco Pigs has a wonderful beginning. Our heroine narrates as she escapes from her mother's womb. Her narration is wonderfully bitter about coming into the dreaded world. The images are startlingly original; the babies large eyes comparable with the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We meet the baby's mother and father who, we're told, will never be as happy as they are at that moment. Then the baby is laid to rest. It starts to cry but stops when it sees a crying baby next to it. The neighbouring baby stops crying. The infants stare at each other, put their hands out and hold hands. I don't know how this scene was achieved. I can imagine recently born babies aren't easy to direct. What I do know is that this is a remarkably effective opening. One of the best and most original I've seen.

Unfortunately, the remainder of the film is not so great. It tries hard and its young director clearly adores the source material but it is this material that's the problem. There's very little new here. And the characters often let themselves down with strange shifts in their traits. For example, the bitter narration I've just spoken about is conducted by Sinead (Runt), the female lead. She's never as bitter again as she is at the beginning. It's a shame the movie focuses on her character at the start. It should have concentrated its efforts on Pig (played by the remarkable Cillian Murphy). His motivations are far more realised. Runt is a much shadier character and the audience never really understands her. Why does she not take to Pig? Why does she take to the bartender, is it his almost illiteracy or his red jumper? Is she gay? Does she fall in love with her roommate?

Comparisons to A Clockwork Orange or The Butcher Boy are unfair. It doesn't possess the soul of either of these. In fact, the violence here is far more sickening because its so gratuitous. Comparisons to Heavenly Creatures are more apt, but that movie was based on a true story, a trait this movie seems to think it has.

The acting from the leads especially Murphy is very solid, though he has a tendency to mumble. They both have a strong screen presence. The direction from Kirsten Sheridan is inconsistent. The beginning is fantastic and flashback scenes seeing the pair as children are equally remarkable but she chooses cliched editing for the disco scenes and leaves in a soliloquoy which betrays the films stage origins and leaves the audience desperately uncomfortable. Otherwise, she has plenty of potential.

Lastly, Disco Pigs was the first film I've seen that focuses for a large part on my native city. It was wonderful to see and I hope to see more. Sheridan though seems to have missed a few geography lessons. When Pig takes the bus from Cork, the film cuts to him on the bus and back to an establishing shot of a restaurant that's in Cork, he then hitchhikes to Donegal, which is about a five hour drive, then miraculously arrives back in Cork, all in the space of a day. Goofs aplenty.

There's a large psychiatric literature on the "twinning effect," which is often a beautiful thing, but in its pathologic manifestation shows up as what's called "symbiotic psychosis." In plain language, although not biological twins, the two main characters here grew up so closely intertwined that their private world disallowed the intrusion of mundane reality. "Private language" is often a characteristic of this clinical syndrome, and in the movie the heavy Cork dialect accentuated (at least for non-Irish) the barrier between the characters and the viewer. Does anyone remember Melanie's song, "We were so close, there was no room/ We bled inside each other's wounds"? Quite apropos. Also, I felt reflections of "David & Lisa," but updated and sort of run in reverse. As with much Irish literature, one has to be prepared for a view of humanity that never crawls out from under Original Sin, but nevertheless this is a serious work, very much worth watching, and deserved a better title.