A Room for Romeo Brass

This film reminded me of how powerless you are as a child - just being outside can get you into a fight, while adults, who often have no right to, can have control over your life. It reminded me how children can "break" or "make" friends so easily, with past grievances forgiven and forgotten in a few seconds. Adults tend to find that a lot harder to do.

I watched this film without knowing anything about it, so perhaps I found the scenes where Morell threatens the two boys on different occasions to be extremely shocking (incidentally, the swearing which is almost constantly present in the film is NOT shocking in the slightest).

The main thing that I got from the film was concerned with how masculinity is defined - Morell tries to teach Romeo Brass how to be a "man" via weird survivalist techniques - violence, macho posturing, being able to take care of yourself seem to be the ways that masculinity is mediated. The bragging and posturing that occurs in the fights between Morell and the boy's fathers seem to mirror an earlier fight between the boys and two other boys who are playing football at the beginning of the film - "are you trying to start a fight?" "No, I AM starting a fight". It was interesting that Knock-Knock's father and Morell were both wearing almost identical shell-suits in the violent climax scene.

While this was technically a good film, I found it to be much more disturbing than Zombie Flesheaters or whatever, because of its realism.