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Movie review: Calvary

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By John Mulderig • Catholic News Service • Posted August 5, 2014

NEW YORK (CNS) — Set in rural Ireland, the bleak but powerful seriocomedy “Calvary” (Fox Searchlight) kicks off with a startling premise.

In the confessional, a grown victim of childhood sex abuse by a priest tells Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), the dedicated pastor of the County Sligo parish where he now lives, that in a week’s time he intends to avenge himself by killing the innocent clergyman.

With the perpetrator of the crimes against him dead, and despairing of being healed by therapy, Father James’ unseen interlocutor reasons that it would be a futile gesture to slay a bad priest. But to take the life of a good cleric, that would certainly be an act that would draw people’s attention.

This opening scene, which establishes the kind of extreme situation that such Catholic authors as Graham Greene or Flannery O’Connor might once have played on, also makes it clear, through the sufferer’s harshly candid description of his experiences, that this is not a film for the summer popcorn set.

Mature viewers prepared for rugged material, on the other hand, will likely consider their investment of time and attention well rewarded.

As writer-director John Michael McDonagh chronicles the seven days that follow Father James’ life-threatening encounter, we learn that this thoroughly decent but otherwise ordinary man of the cloth is a widower and father ordained after his wife’s death. This aspect of his past is revealed when his emotionally fragile, Dublin-based daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), comes to town, looking for his support in the wake of a romantic crisis.

Along with nurturing Fiona, Father James also tends to the varied needs of the errant or merely eccentric souls who make up his small flock.

They include Jack (Chris O’Dowd), the local butcher, a wronged husband who’s not overly anxious to reconcile with his wife, Veronica (Orla O’Rourke); Michael (Dylan Moran), a shady business tycoon out to use a donation to the church to assuage his conscience; Frank (Aiden Gillen), an atheist doctor who has nothing but contempt for believers; and Gerard (M. Emmet Walsh), an elderly expatriate American novelist who hopes to evade a lingering end by committing suicide.

They’re a challenging lot, but Father James does his best with each. Less laudable is his response to the plight of socially awkward, sexually frustrated bachelor Milo (Killian Scott). Unsettlingly, Father James advises Milo to move to a city where he’ll probably find the girls more open to his casual advances.

As with an exchange in which Father James and his weasel-like curate, Father Timothy (David Wilmot), discuss the content of a parishioner’s recent confession far too openly, this off-kilter interaction with Milo may raise the hackles of Catholic moviegoers. At least in the case of the penitent, however, there are extenuating pastoral circumstances.

Such incidental flaws notwithstanding, overall, McDonagh is mostly respectful, if unsparing, in his treatment of the contemporary church as he ably explores a range of hefty themes — faith, moral failure, reconciliation and sacrifice among them.

He’s sustained throughout by Gleeson’s memorable performance during which we watch Father James display understandable uncertainty about how to respond to the existential threat confronting him. Should he arm himself? Involve the police? Flee the vicinity until the danger has past? Or should he offer himself in Christ-like expiation for the sins of others?

Watching him decide makes for thoughtful drama, though the demands of the process mean that the appropriate audience for “Calvary” remains a narrow one.

The film contains brief but extremely gory violence, drug use, mature themes, including clergy sexual abuse, homosexual prostitution and suicide, a few uses of profanity and much rough and crude language. The Catholic News Service classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Mulderig is on the staff of Catholic News Service.

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The second feature written and directed by the prodigiously talented Irishman John Michael McDonagh opens with a quote from Saint Augustine: “Despair not, one of the thieves was spared; presume not, one of the thieves was not.” (It is no accident that this bit of wisdom is cited in “Waiting For Godot,” an obscure theatrical work by another talented Irishman name of Beckett.) Later in the movie, Fiona ( Kelly Reilly ) the daughter of County Sligo priest James Lavelle ( Brendan Gleeson )—Lavelle took the vows after his wife, Fiona’s mother, died years earlier—takes confession with her literal and spiritual father, and, obliquely addressing the troubles that informed her recent, half-hearted suicide attempt, asserts, “I belong to myself, not to anyone else.” To which Father James responds, “True. False.”

A mordant sense of duality that eventually takes on near-apocalyptic dimensions runs through this very darkly comic tale, telling a week in the life of Father James. Sunday kicks off pretty horribly. A man ostensibly offering Father James his confession explicitly describes his sexual abuse at the hands of the priest years earlier, and outline his plan for revenge: he intends to kill a “good priest” in exactly a week. He means for that good priest to be Father James, and invites him to a beach spot to meet his doom.

This disturbs James, as well it might. But he does not go to the authorities. Instead, he tends to his flock, such as it is. And a more perverse bunch would be hard to find anywhere else than in a provincial, lonely Irish remote. There’s the local butcher (Chris O’Dowd), who might well be slapping around his sexpot wife (Oria O’Rourke), who’s brazenly conducting an affair with an African immigrant auto mechanic (Isaach de Bankole). The local barkeep’s a ball of resentment, the town’s most dapper young man is completely socially inept, the police chief’s a glib sourpuss who makes no attempt to disguise the fact that he does business with a manic, Jimmy-Cagney-impersonating male prostitute. The local hospital biggie is a monstrously cynical atheist with a monstrous anecdote to explain his poor attitude. The local fat cat is swilling in his ale, and worse, at his manse after being abandoned by his wife and child. And so on. It is again no accident that the only characters who are at all kind to Father James, besides his daughter, are non-Irish ones: a very aged American ex-pat author (M. Emmett Walsh, whose presence is extremely welcome despite his looking like death warmed over, which admittedly works for the character), determined to off himself before he goes completely decrepit, and a French widow (Marie Josée Croze) who commiserates with Father James after he performs last rites on her husband.

McDonagh’s structuring is unusual: almost all the scenes are what are referred to in the theater as “two handers,” that is, exchanges between only two characters. Each scene tackles a particular variation on the movie’s theme, which is the earning of forgiveness, and whether taking what’s said to be the right action is sufficient to do so. Gleeson’s performance is magnificent; sharp, compassionate, bemused, never not intellectually active. McDonagh’s dialogue is similarly never not sharp, and only occasionally lost to an actor’s Irish accent. As the picture progresses, Father James’ parishioners morph from a group of perverse individuals to one of intransigently spiteful lunatics. McDonagh takes considerable risks, in this day and age, crafting what’s essentially an absurdist allegory. By the film’s finale, this viewer felt that one or two of the risks didn’t entirely pay off, but my admiration for McDonagh’s brass remained intact. This is the kind of movie that galvanizes and discomfits while it’s on screen, and is terrific fodder for conversation long after its credits roll. Even if you are neither Catholic nor Irish, this “Calvary” will in no way be a useless sacrifice of your moviegoing time.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .