A Boy's Life

An unnerving study of family abuse, this time from Mississippi, but one with telling lessons for societies across the 'developed' world. Seven-year-old Robert and his brother are cared for by their grandmother, their legal guardian after their mother (raped into teenage pregnancy) felt unable to cope. At home, Robert is hyperactive, disturbed and violent. At school, he's intelligent and able. The film follows various wings of the very able social services as they try to source the problem, one which, when exposed, is disturbing in the extreme. There is a positive outcome in this case, and some much needed regaining of self-respect by a key participant. But the deeper implication for parenthood, and the broader social realm, of those situations not investigated, is alternately chilling and demoralising.