BLESS THE BEASTS AND CHILDREN

US, 1971, Colour.
Directed by Stanley Kramer.

Bless the Beasts and the Children achieved most fame by its theme song, sung by The Carpenters and nominated for an Oscar in 1971. However, it is a fine film and it is to be regretted that so many people missed seeing it on its release.

The film takes the theme of adolescent misfits and explores their feelings and , crises in a typical American camp setting and by a symbolic analogy with buffalo who are shot for sport because they are superfluous. The structure of the film is a mission; to save the buffalo. Pertinent flashbacks about the boys, their families and life at the camp are interspersed in the onward flow of the mission.

Director Stanley Kramer works here with unknown young actors most effectively to make a film moving in its style and implications.

1. Did you like the title of the film? What did it mean to you? Did the theme song and music add to the meaning?

2. What was the effect of the prologue - the nightmare, the boys as buffalo, shooting. Cotton being shot by his mother? How did this give a sense of anticipation to the film?

3. What were your first impressions of the boys? Did you think they were fairly hopeless misfits or not? Why?

4. How did the film communicate its sense of mission? How urgent was it to the boys? How did they see it? How was it a crusade of liberation to them? How important was it for them? How symbolic?

5. Was the journey - flashback structure of the film effective? What dramatic impact did this give the film?

6. How did the journey continue to have this urgency - horses, music, slow-motion, cars, walking etc?

7. What picture of camp life emerged? Were the ideas behind the camp good? What kind of cowboy were the boys supposed to become? What was the significance of the poem, the awards, the Indian emblems, the rivalry, the boys' rival cruelty to one another? Did the camp offer a spirit of true manliness?

8. Why was the group so hopeless in this kind of achievement? Was it a great failure on their part? Why didn't their coach help them?

9. Comment on the personnel - the camp director and his poem, his refusal of money from the T.V. entertainer; the coach, his bullying, his taunting, his case of dirty books, his reaction to the stereo, to the buffalo shooting.

10. Did your attitude change towards the boys as you got to know them? What was wrong with each of them? Was it their own fault, their parents or both? How effective were the flashbacks to explain them?
- Shecker and his comedian father? His father's pride in his singing and his failure?
- Gooden and his mother and father's discussion about his being pampered, a fairy; the incident in the lake and his acceptance?
- the two brothers and the psychiatrist?
- Teft and his rich father and being fobbed off with wealth, his seeming arrogance?
- Cotton and his glamorous mother and her lovers; his love for his father, and his desperate need for love?

11. How did they interact on the way? Did they get to understand one another? How did Cotton finally manoeuvre him into continuing to the end? How much determination did they have? What did each contribute to the success of the mission?

12. What effect did the incidents on the way have on them:
- tired horses, taking the truck, being followed by the police?
- the clash in the store, sending the toughs running, hunger, walking?

13. What impact did the flashback about the buffalo-shoot have - did you agree with the boys or with the shooters (and the young lad)? Were the buffalo useless and misfits, 'dings'?

14. What drove Cotton? Why did he go berserk when the mission seemed impossible?

15. Were you glad they loosed the buffalo? What was the significance of the buffalo only going a little way?

16. What was the dramatic significance of the death of Cotton?

17. What comment did the film make about the American way of life?

18. Was the film on the side of the children? Was it fair? Was it a valuable film for children? Parents?