Steve review - educator in crisis

What's going wrong with teenage boys and young men? Like the lauded Netflix series Adolescence, Steve – the second film collaboration between star-producer Cillian Murphy and director Tim Mielants – takes a bold and intriguing approach in its search for answers.

Adapted from Max Porter's novella Shy, the film focuses on teachers as well as students, and it's an apt vehicle for Murphy, whose parents are both veteran educators. Where Adolescence found fault with toxic social media and an education system that treats students like prisoners, Steve is set in pre-social media 1996 at the fictional Stanton Wood, an experimental residential school for teenage boys who are one step away from borstal. For these kids, the problems started at home. At best, their families couldn't handle their supercharged youthful energy and defiance. At worst, their parents rejected them.

Steve spans wildly eventful 24 hours at Stanton Wood. Head teacher Steve (Murphy) interrupts his commute when he sees a student, Shy (Jay Lycurgo) swaying in a field just off the school grounds. "This isn't great is it?" Steve says to him. "Please tell me you know it isn't all right to be out here at breakfast time getting fully baked" (Pictured below: Cillian Murphy and Jay Lycurgo).

Later, the arrival of a TV news documentary crew sparks excitement in the students and dread among the school staff. Steve's go-to tech is his mini-cassette recorder, onto which he dictates his own ever-growing to-do list as well as private pep talks aimed at Stanton Hall's newest teacher (Simbiatu Ajikawo). This is, without doubt, the school’s and the headmaster’s worst day. Government funding is already tight, and now Stanton Hall is on the verge of losing its home, a decaying stately one eyed by property developers.

The school's overtaxed staff, already fatigued by working long shifts, senses impending disaster. Steve, meanwhile, struggles with his various missions: connecting with his troubled students, inspiring his fellow teachers, and placating the school's financial overseers.

Though Steve has got no time for the visitors from the trust, he's superb with the kids: He finds, in each interaction, a way to connect uniquely with each boy.

Stanton Hall's standout students include wiseacre Jamie (Luke Ayres), bitter Tarone (Tut Nyuot), and chatty Benny (Araloyin Oshunremi), but it's the quiet Shy who makes the strongest impression. Like Steve, Shy conceals a private pain that's destroying him. Shy retreats so far inward that even the best efforts of the school counselor (Emily Watson, excellent as always) cannot reach him.

Steve ducks into the spare rooms where he's hidden the illegal painkillers that keep him going. A fellow teacher (Tracey Ullman) says that Steve's still recovering from a bad car crash a year earlier, but judging from the few sidelong glances among the senior staff, they know that Steve is seriously impaired.

For Murphy, the role is a worthy follow-up to his Oscar-winning turn as the father of the atomic bomb in Oppenheimer. By turns despairing, defiant, and darkly humorous, Murphy’s performance is a tour de force and might be the closest experience moviegoers have to seeing the Irish actor in his savagely kinetic yet fiercely controlled stage performances.

What's surprising about Steve is how funny it is. When local MP Sir Hugh Montagu Powell (Roger Allam) drops by for a photo op, his condescending speech draws hilariously frank reactions from the boys. (The grandee's sneering tone and his pronunciation of his last name as "Pole" draw endless scorn from staff and students alike.) And when a hapless teacher attempts to engage students with questions about Chaucer's use of irony, the kids, distracted by the documentary crew, flatten themselves against the windows to display an extraordinary variety of rude gestures.

Cinematographer Robrecht Heyvaert's camera roves the school's warren of hallways with delirious energy, though it's not clear whether the film's visual style mirrors what the documentary crew might be seeing, or what Steve and the boys are feeling. Maybe it's both. While the film's visual style sometimes threatens to overshadow its deeply felt dramatic moments, it offers a powerful look at the bond among teachers, our everyday heroes, and the resilience of the young. No matter how far they go astray, they're worth every attention.

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