This film starts with a quote from
Augustine.
Do not despair, one of the thieves was
saved.
Do not presume, one of the thieves was
damned’.
We might think that this is therefore
about redemption, but it is much more complex than that. John Micheal
McDonagh, who wrote and directed it, must surely know that this was one of
Samuel Beckett’s favourite quotes. McDonagh himself says it is part of his
suicide trilogy. I think it is one of the most arresting films I have seen for some time. I saw it 24 hours ago and
have not stopped thinking about it since.
I last saw Brendan Gleeson in McDonagh’s
film The Garde. In his new film Gleeson plays another West Coast
Irishman, another loner, another maverick, and again the smartest man in the room, but how different
the priest in Calvary is to the Garde. He looks different, and it is not
the priest’s beard that does it, it’s all in the eyes.
This priest, Father James Lavelle, is the
classic scapegoat. He will pay the
price for the sins of the community, those of the Church and of his
parishioners. He is described at
the start of the film as an innocent man, carefully chosen as a victim because
he is innocent. But he is not
naïve. One of his parishioners
says he is just a bit to smart for this parish. And he is not innocent like a lamb. In some ways he is more like a
goat. He is a powerful and
assertive man, willing to confront his ‘sheep’ if he thinks they are straying,
and to correct them if they show insufficient respect for Christianity or the
Church. And he is no saint. He is not without sin, not
without falling short. When
push comes to shove he is willing to shove back, hard.
The Sligo landscape in which this film is
set is dominated by a huge square, squat hill (I think it’s Mount Knockarea),
its former towering heights now crumbled, and its flat top surrounded by a ruin
of fallen rock. Is
this a deliberate visual reference to the state of the Church in Ireland? It still dominates the landscape,
but its former glory has decayed, its moral power is diminished. Its current priests live in its shadow,
and too many of its victims still live in darkness.
At the start of the film I assumed that
this was to be the story of Father James’ Calvary, but by the end we see that
most of the film’s characters are carrying their own heavy crosses. They are hurt and angry. Calvary
is concerned with anger, its roots and effects, particularly people’s anger at the Church that allowed so
much abuse to happen and then go unacknowledged, unpunished and often
unapologized for. Calvary is concerned with the way the past sins of the abusing priests have
distorted their victims lives and still impact on those around them. And these sins are not only
those committed in Ireland.
The historical cruelty of Christian missionaries in Africa is also
referenced. This
is a film about anger, but it is not an angry film. Its last, wordless, scene is surely about forgiveness. It ends literally on a grace
note.
We saw some of the cast in The Garde, including Pat Shortt, Gary Lyndon and the diminutive Michael Og
Lane. In Calvary we also see how Chris O’Dowd can play straight. Domhnall Gleeson (Brendan’s
son) plays a cameo, and I did not
recognize him - even though I enjoyed his work in True Grit, Anne Karenina and About Time. This was not because he was
heavily made up, he was not. He
simply played his character so convincingly I didn’t look past the ‘persona’.
Kelly Reilly, who I last saw as Mrs. Watson
in the two Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes Movies,
plays Father James’s daughter (his wife, her mother, died before he was
ordained). Hers is a
quiet, understated, yet crucial performance.
Dylan Moran plays a less convincingly
written character, representing the financiers who’s criminally irresponsible
behavior brought about the ruin of the Southern Irish economy, and yet walked
away unpunished. Unpunished,
but not content. At one point he
pisses on a painting. It is Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, with its famous anamorphic skull. He is trying to impress the priest with his
indifference to his own wealth.
The priest is unimpressed,
but the painting itself is a reminder, amidst the pomp and power of the
political world, of our common mortality.
Some other characters are emblematic, and
McDonagh acknowledges this himself within the film. One of them, Dr Frank Harte, tells us he is ‘the
atheistic Doctor, it’s a clichéd role.’
Calvary is a
serious film, unflinching yet essentially humane. It pulls no punches in order to make its point, and
maybe it tries to land too many of them. But it is held together by the strength of Brendan
Gleeson’s central performance, one of the most convincing portrayals of a
priest I have seen on screen.
I also admire Mr. Gleeson’s commitment to Irish cinema. He has played in many
big budget movies, including Braveheart, Michael Collins, Lake Placid,
Mission Impossible II, AI, Gangs
of New York, Troy, and The Kingdom of Heaven,
Harry Potter. He could so easily
become Hollywood’s Irishman of choice, but he keeps a home on Galway Bay, and
his presence and considerable gifts have made movies such as The General,
The Butcher Boy, In Bruges The Garde and Calvary successes.
Xan Brooks recently wrote in The
Guardian, that Gleeson “plays God’s servant as a
recovering alcoholic with an impossible task, variously fuelled by rage, reason
and sadness. Here, at least, is a
Christ we can relate to” and “How refreshing it is, in the wake of
Darren Aronofsky’s lumbering, self important Noah, to see a spiritual saga that
is smart enough to take route the less traveled, the low road to glory. Calvary touches greatness. It crawls clear through the slime and
comes out looking holy.”
