I couldn't stop thinking about that the entire film? Can a 13 year old get tattoos with parents' permission? If so, what kind of parents would let a 13 year old get multiple tattoos on his hand?
Brilliant film, by the way.
Did I adequately answer your condescending question?
But Nicholas Barclay was portrayed as a quite a wild and rebellious child.
With his mother being drug-addicted (only mentioned briefly in the film, I think) and him growing up in a deprived and dysfunctional environment, I understood his tattoos as a provocation, maybe even a badge of honour or a warning to others that he was not as vulnerable and young as he looked (I think his mother says at one point that "he was 13 going on 30").
That's all valid. I'm not questioning a 13 year old's motivation to get a tattoo, I guess I'm having trouble understanding how a 13 year old boy goes about getting a tattoo. I suppose it's possible that he knew someone who did tats and did them for him.
Did I adequately answer your condescending question?
They weren't exactly works of are, they were something a girl could apparently replicate in an orphanage toilet.
sharesame way a 13 year old gets their hands on drugs and alcohol .... irresponsible adults
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I don't think anyone under 16 can get tattoos from a professional tattoo artist, even with parents' permission.
Actually that was one of the things I loved most about this film, the way information was parceled out over the run time to subtlety change your initial impressions (must like what must have happened for the family). The tattoo remark was one of the first examples of this -- it starts to change your initial impression of Nicholas and his family.
they were probably home made. IIRC they were just three single letters, not artwork. lots of young lower class people (and prisoners) tattoo themselves/each other with simple letters, teardrops, crosses, gang symbols, etc... using india ink. you can often tell as they age differently than professionally done tattoos do
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Nothing to think about here. Home made tattoos, like the ones he had of the cross on his hand, are extremely common.
Even while I was at school, which was by no means a school in a poor neighbourhood, there where kids at that age sitting down and using sowing needles and writing ink (Quink)to make those crappy tattoos on their hands, knuckles etc.
I went to school with a girl who used to do that to herself. Pretty freaky, to say the least.
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My friend, Chris, got a tattoo on his leg when we were both in the 4th grade. He's the youngest I have ever seen to get one.
From dream to dream....we have always been, like an ever flowing stream....
that immediately piqued my interest also.. the first thing that crossed my mind was gang affiliation. furthmore, the imposter only had a text description of what the tattoos were. He then got some girl to replicate it on his body - he had no way of knowing what it actually looked like, size/font/position etc obviously he could not have fluked this. Surely his family and friends would remeber what it looked like and it was probbaly visible in photos, why was this not picked up by anyone?
shareThe descriptions of Nicholas' tattoos were, I think, in the Missing Person document that the French guy had faxed over at the start of the film.
What I found more dubious was- how did the French guy (sorry, what's his name again?) conveniently find a young girl in the toilets able to give him tattoos, just when he needed them?
Uh, because he was in a group home with lots of other children and teenagers and she did it for other people?
shareYeah but from what I remember, I think he got the tattoo done when he wasn't in the home anymore.
shareHow would they know that? He went missing and they never saw him again. The kid must have gotten them when he lived at home.
What I've got in my head you can't buy, steal or borrow. I believe in live and let live.
I'm not so curious about where he found a girl that could do the tattoos..I'm sure he found someone..but didn't he say that he asked her to copy the tattoos off of the missing person document? Did this girl not even question why he was getting the same exact tattoos as a kid that is missing? Maybe she just didn't care. I might be thinking too much into this but I found it odd.
shareRight? But to get a tattoo, you only need a needle and ink. (They can get them done in prison--with no machinery.) They might've been home done and simple. Like initials.
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