This film seems to be a homage to Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". It has a lot of deliberate "quotes", and shares similar themes and music. It's a kind of dialogue between the two directors, a reply. Clockwork Orange was speculative fiction, suggesting this is how society could become, whereas The Young Poisoner's Handbook is retrospective, and based on a true story, in effect saying we are already there, and were so ten years before Clockwork was made.
The story is based on the actual life of homicidal poisoner Graham Young, and doesn't do too much to hide that this is a biography, not some grim fictional noir. Graham narrates the entire film, and talks about how from childhood he really had nothing in common with his working class London family, but early on determines he has a talent for chemistry, and uses his experiments as an escape. By the time he is a teen, humankind consists of just so many lab rats as far as Graham is concerned. And Graham isn't interested in curing people, instead he wants to poison them. He turns his attention first to his stepmother, not that his sister Winnie escapes his chemical wrath entirely when her prying eyes get to be a problem as he slowly poisons dear old mom. Graham's solution - poison her eye drops and blind her. Fortunately he only disposes of one eye. Like the Mafia, none of this is personal for Graham, it's really just an experiment.
The great irony is that the law actually does catch Graham after he kills his stepmom, and he ends up in a place for the criminally insane, probably to be there forever as he is judged a sociopath. But one psychiatrist has other ideas. Graham interests him, and he decides to "cure" him. The doc overestimates the ability of science to defeat sociopathy, but Graham, at first intending to con the doc just to get out, gets tragically conned himself into believing himself eventually cured.
So after nine years Graham is released. But that's the thing about prison. Inmates - even in psychiatric prisons - usually do well as long as you supervise their every move - when they sleep, when they work and what they work on, when they eat. The problem is when they get out and have freedom of choice as to their own path. I'd normally say watch and find out what happens, but Columbine and cultural cowardice means you probably never will. After 1999, when some teens began to become lethal and to use the popular culture as a model for what form their killing would take, the movie industry began to fear giving them ideas. Thus I have not seen this film on TV for 20 years and the DVD is long out of print and something tells me this is NOT on Criterion's short list.
Artistically, this film is full of good performances and the art design gets the drab look of early 60s London just right. From the crowded housing, to the local pub, to the frumpy furnishings meant entirely for utility not for decoration, to the cheesy act that passes for early 60s British TV, this film has England of the period nailed. It even hints of the sexual revolution that happened while Graham was in jail and thus missed out on that just increases his social isolation and misreading of social cues.
I'd highly recommend this one if you can ever find it. It does pop up on youtube from time to time.
The story is based on the actual life of homicidal poisoner Graham Young, and doesn't do too much to hide that this is a biography, not some grim fictional noir. Graham narrates the entire film, and talks about how from childhood he really had nothing in common with his working class London family, but early on determines he has a talent for chemistry, and uses his experiments as an escape. By the time he is a teen, humankind consists of just so many lab rats as far as Graham is concerned. And Graham isn't interested in curing people, instead he wants to poison them. He turns his attention first to his stepmother, not that his sister Winnie escapes his chemical wrath entirely when her prying eyes get to be a problem as he slowly poisons dear old mom. Graham's solution - poison her eye drops and blind her. Fortunately he only disposes of one eye. Like the Mafia, none of this is personal for Graham, it's really just an experiment.
The great irony is that the law actually does catch Graham after he kills his stepmom, and he ends up in a place for the criminally insane, probably to be there forever as he is judged a sociopath. But one psychiatrist has other ideas. Graham interests him, and he decides to "cure" him. The doc overestimates the ability of science to defeat sociopathy, but Graham, at first intending to con the doc just to get out, gets tragically conned himself into believing himself eventually cured.
So after nine years Graham is released. But that's the thing about prison. Inmates - even in psychiatric prisons - usually do well as long as you supervise their every move - when they sleep, when they work and what they work on, when they eat. The problem is when they get out and have freedom of choice as to their own path. I'd normally say watch and find out what happens, but Columbine and cultural cowardice means you probably never will. After 1999, when some teens began to become lethal and to use the popular culture as a model for what form their killing would take, the movie industry began to fear giving them ideas. Thus I have not seen this film on TV for 20 years and the DVD is long out of print and something tells me this is NOT on Criterion's short list.
Artistically, this film is full of good performances and the art design gets the drab look of early 60s London just right. From the crowded housing, to the local pub, to the frumpy furnishings meant entirely for utility not for decoration, to the cheesy act that passes for early 60s British TV, this film has England of the period nailed. It even hints of the sexual revolution that happened while Graham was in jail and thus missed out on that just increases his social isolation and misreading of social cues.
I'd highly recommend this one if you can ever find it. It does pop up on youtube from time to time.