<\/p>\n
Most schools have one or two problem students. At Stanton Wood, it\u2019s nothing but.<\/p>\n
Operated by the title character, \u201cSteve\u201d \u2014 into whom lead actor Cillian Murphy channels all sorts of irreconcilable conflict \u2014 this is the reform school of last resort. It\u2019s the place \u201cvery disturbed young men\u201d (as novelist Max Porter described them) are sent at great expense to the English taxpayers in the hope that the embattled institution\u2019s small but dedicated staff of teachers and therapists can help the lads to manage their aggression and make something of themselves.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n In theory, a film this strong should have premiered at Venice or Telluride, where it might have been noticed. Instead, \u201cSteve\u201d bows in the Toronto Film Festival\u2019s Platform competition, where it\u2019s apt to be overlooked amid more than 200 other movies \u2014 which could happen on Netflix, too. Instead of letting that happen, it must be said: A profoundly moving and superbly acted diamond in the rough, \u201cSteve\u201d is better than anything the streamer has pushed for best picture to date. Netflix famously uses the fall festivals to launch their awards contenders, but the company is playing this one close to the vest, putting it in theaters on Sept. 19, then releasing to the service on Oct. 3.<\/p>\n \u201cSteve\u201d represents a reunion of sorts between leading man Murphy, co-star Emily Watson and Belgian director Tim Mielants, who made last year\u2019s wrenching Magdalene Laundries drama \u201cSmall Things Like These.\u201d For this unrelated (but even more powerful) follow-up, Murphy personally encouraged Porter to adapt his novel, \u201cShy,\u201d as a screenplay in which he might star.<\/p>\n Hence the title change. Where Shy was the subject of Porter\u2019s slender book \u2014 which is really more of a Beat-poetry day-in-the-life monologue \u2014 the focus shifts here to the weary headmaster who\u2019s been fighting on their behalf all these years. It\u2019s 1996, and the government has pulled the plug. They\u2019ve sold the school out from under Steve and his staff, who include psychiatrist Jenny (Watson) and tough-love Amanda (Tracey Ullman), who describes her job as part prison guard, part teacher, part mommy, part battle ax.<\/p>\n On the day in question, Steve has invited a documentary film crew inside the controversial institution (it\u2019s expensive, and these underpaid heroes are practically the only ones who haven\u2019t given up on the aggro adolescents in their care). There\u2019s a sense of dread from the get-go, but these outsiders\u2019 video cameras lend another level of verisimilitude to a ragged, resolutely unsentimental depiction of a dozen or so teens who could, it\u2019s clear, rip one another to shreds.<\/p>\n That dramatic tension underlies all 92 minutes of Mielants\u2019 empathetic portrait, which is part inspirational-teacher movie, part unflinching look at how bad it gets, in the tradition of such landmark British films as Alan Clarke\u2019s \u201cScum\u201d and Lindsay Anderson\u2019s \u201cIf\u2026.\u201d Sure enough, if you\u2019ve ever dealt with such kids, then you know they\u2019re capable of turning violent on a dime, and it can be terrifying, since they don\u2019t seem to know their own strength. Steve\u2019s team is constantly de-escalating such conflict. At Stanton Wood, their responsibility is not only to keep the students from harming each other, but also to keep them from harming themselves.<\/p>\n Porter\u2019s book opens with Shy carrying a rucksack full of stones. In the film, Shy is played by Jay Lycurgo, an alternately sensitive and intimidating young actor in his breakout role, and the bag doesn\u2019t appear until midway through, when the film crew go snooping without permission in the students\u2019 room. This could be a scene out of a found-footage horror movie, as the camera scans Shy\u2019s room, revealing just how troubled his mind must be. Somehow, Steve has missed the signs, which Jenny\u2019s been trying to tell him for weeks.<\/p>\n Mielants assembles the elements into an intricate post-modern (but still mostly linear) collage, elevating what might have otherwise felt slightly stagy (what with the single location and all) by mixing the various characters\u2019 too-blue-for-TV testimonials with artfully observed private moments. Cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert juggles the two formats, SD Betacam and film, as editor Danielle Palmer cuts between obstreperous outbursts for the doc crew\u2019s benefit \u2014 including a wicked takedown of a visiting MP (Roger Allam) \u2014 and stolen moments of intimacy seen only by us.<\/p>\n This is how we\u2019re privy to a personal phone call between Shy and his mum, in which she shares her decision to cut off all contact with her son. And it\u2019s how we know that Steve has been stealing sips from bottles of alcohol he\u2019s stashed around school \u2014 his way of coping with guilt and addiction issues of his own. There\u2019s a disturbing clich\u00e9 among boarding school movies, whereby it takes someone committing suicide to enact real change in a dysfunctional institution. \u201cSteve\u201d exploits that concern to a degree, but ultimately does something unexpected with it, shifting the focus (as it did the title) from Shy to Steve.<\/p>\n For many, \u201cOppenheimer\u201d was the performance of Murphy\u2019s career (too few saw his astonishing work in \u201cBreakfast on Pluto\u201d). In any case, the Irish actor\u2019s two recent collaborations with Mielants demonstrate both a humility \u2014 the tiny films are anything but paycheck projects \u2014 and how much more he still has to offer. It\u2019s rare to see the fresh-faced star with scruff, or yielding the scene to a room full of unknowns, but Steve is a man who gives too much of himself, and it takes a man of Murphy\u2019s commitment to suggest where that comes from.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source ca.news.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Most schools have one or two problem students. At Stanton Wood, it\u2019s nothing but. Operated by the title character, \u201cSteve\u201d \u2014 into whom lead actor Cillian Murphy channels all sorts of irreconcilable conflict \u2014 this is the reform school of last resort. It\u2019s the place \u201cvery disturbed young men\u201d (as novelist Max Porter described them) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2000747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[40640,363607,363609,363611,343975,23191,363612,363610,363608,344374],"class_list":["post-2000746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-cillian-murphy","tag-emily-watson","tag-irreconcilable-conflict","tag-magdalene-laundries","tag-max-porter","tag-netflix","tag-problem-students","tag-reform-school","tag-stanton-wood","tag-tim-mielants"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Cillian-Murphy-Turns-Inspirational-Teacher-Tropes-Upside-Down-in-the-Years.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}