by Mick LaSalle
'Calvary' review: Priest suffers for sins of others
"Calvary" is one of the smartest and most impassioned films about Christianity in recent memory, though to say that might give the wrong impression. In tone and strategy, the film is low key and subtle, and the story can be appreciated both for its surface qualities and its deeper intentions.
With no preamble, writer-director John Martin McDonagh lays out the basic situation: Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is hearing confessions one day, when a voice on the other side of the grate tells him a couple of very disturbing things. The first thing the man tells him is that, as a child, he was repeatedly abused by an evil priest, now deceased. The second is that he plans to kill Father James in exactly one week.
He knows Father James is completely innocent of this crime, that he's a good hardworking priest, but that's the idea. He wants to do something horrible and irrational in revenge against the universe for the horrible, irrational thing that was done to him.
This is a compelling set-up, one that might distract the casual viewer from realizing the biblical parallel of an innocent person being asked to die for the sins of the guilty.
In any case, McDonagh doesn't lose himself in metaphor, and despite the film's title, which refers to the place Jesus was crucified, the movie is not about establishing rigid connections. Rather, it's about exploring the challenges of living a Christian life, the not-pretty, hands-on difficulty of practicing forgiveness and forbearance, which always seems a lot easier when you're talking about 2,000 years ago.
The movie's success lies in the fact that Father James is no Christ figure but a specific and realized character trying to do the right thing. A priest in a small Irish village, he carries an awareness of his own imperfection in his very manner. A widower who was called to the priesthood in midlife, he has a devoted but troubled adult daughter (Kelly Reilly) and a history of battling the familiar Irish demon, alcohol.
Speaking of demons, many supernatural films deal in demon possession, and they couldn't scare anybody. But "Calvary," if not outright frightening, is genuinely alarming, in its subtle hint of something terribly wrong within the town. I imagine most people will watch the film and merely see the village as populated by vivid eccentrics. But a closer look at these odd, bitter, hostile characters will suggest something darker at work.
Indeed, the bulk of the movie consists of a series of bizarre encounters between Father James and the villagers, who taunt him and challenge his faith and carry on in outlandish ways that barely conceal their misery. Whether you choose to see them as metaphorically or literally demon possessed, McDonagh's intention is clearly along these lines.
calvary2.jpgA sense of escalating weirdness maintains the movie's sense of forward motion, and that - plus Gleeson's scruffy humanity, used to loving effect - is quite enough for "Calvary" to hold the audience in its grip. Also look for Marie-Josée Croze, left, in the small and yet strangely key role of a woman transfigured by grief.
--------
LaSalle adds:
I'm pleased to see that "Calvary" is mostly getting good reviews, though it also has received a few negative reviews that are rather peculiar. The criticisms of the film usually say something to the effect that the townspeople are strange and extreme, hard to believe, hovering in a zone near comedy, and that this made for a discordant experience.
What is not immediately realized by people, including many critics, is that much of the movie is about demon possession. Now if your entire frame of reference for demon possession is Hollywood movies, you won't recognize this. But if your frame of reference actually includes something like, oh I dunno, the BIBLE, then you can't miss it. It's the most obvious thing in the world. Everyone in the town is tormented, and they see in this priest a living rebuke. They see in him the enemy with whom they are compelled to engage.
The priest is enacting some of the tribulations of Jesus, from the point that Jesus entered Jerusalem. It's the spectacle of goodness encountering the worst of humanity. It's supposed to be extreme. It's supposed to be bizarre. That's pretty much the whole idea.