There’s basically two ways for a person to feel after viewing writer/director John Michael McDonagh’s new film, “Calvary.” The first is that the world is an ugly place full of desperate, despicable people and, due to the child sex abuse scandals, the Church has lost much of its credibility when it comes to providing a way to help them. The second is pretty much the same as the first, except that there’s still some hope left. Really, it comes down to how you choose to interpret the final scene of the film.
In contrast, the opening of the movie is unambiguous and deceptively simple in how it sets up its premise. It begins with Father James (Brendan Gleeson) sitting in a confessional when a supposed penitent enters and states his intentions to murder the priest in a week’s time.
The man on the other side of the screen explains to Father James that as a child he was continuously molested by a member of the clergy over a five year period and now wishes to make a statement by killing an innocent priest. He closes by telling Father James the time and location they should meet to carry out the execution.
Although Father James claims to have recognized the man’s voice, and his bishop assures him that the seal of confession does not apply (no absolution was sought or given), the priest decides not to inform the police. Rather, he chooses to remain in the small Irish town that constitutes his parish and attend to his regular duties. His unstated reasons for doing so are yet another thing left for the audience to decide.
The bulk of the film follows Father James as he spends the week interacting with his somewhat estranged daughter (he joined the priesthood after becoming a widower) and the various townsfolk who make up his congregation. His daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), is recovering from a suicide attempt following a failed relationship, and still holds some resentment against James for entering the priesthood so soon after his wife’s death. Despite her emotional turmoil, however, Fiona has traveled from London in order to try and reconcile with her father.
Everyone else in town, on the other hand, appears to have little use for the priest, at least on the surface. The richest man in the area shows him an apathetic indifference. The local butcher openly ridicules him. The butcher’s adulterous wife laughs at his advice while simultaneously flirting with him. Both the wife’s lover and the Buddhist pub owner show him unconcealed contempt. The corrupt law officer flaunts his homosexual prostitute before him. The aggressively atheist doctor continuously tries to shake his faith. Everyone, it seems, has lost all faith in the Church, and takes out their disillusionment on Father James.
If "Calvary" comes close to having a glaring fault, it’s that the entire population of the small village in which James resides, even the loutish priest with whom he shares a rectory, is so unrelentingly vile that they come near the point of cartoonishness. Seriously, if the real Ireland was anything like this place, one gets the impression we would all be better off if the whole country simply sank into the ocean.
Fortunately, there are two things which save the film from going too far with its depictions of James’ parishioners. One is that the actors manage to convey a feeling that, despite their hostility, their characters really want the priest to be there doing what he is doing. They’ve given up, but they don’t want him to. Even when the town doctor relates a particularly horrible experience he had early in his career involving a paralyzed child, an event which clearly contributed to the physician’s atheism, there is the lingering sense that he really desires for the priest to provide an answer.
The other is that the film can get away with some of its more outlandish characterizations because it doesn’t have both feet firmly planted in realism to begin with. The movie is clearly an allegory. The title and the setup blatantly put the priest in a Christ-like role as he has been singled out to suffer for sins he didn’t commit. And yet, he continues on, doggedly attempting to serve those who reject him.
"Calvary" doesn’t let the audience completely off the hook with its allegory, though. In one of the film’s most gut-wrenching scenes, reality is brought crashing in as Father James stumbles across a young girl meandering along a country road. The two walk innocently together for a short ways, cracking jokes with one another until the girl’s father arrives and angrily demands she immediately get in the car. The father’s withering look of disgust and accusation combined with James’ expression of realization and sorrow say more about what the abuse scandal has done to the priesthood than most words ever could.
With scenes like that, the movie can be a tough watch for faithful Catholics. It’s hard to see a good priest, even a fictional one, be the target for so much concentrated hatred. Like in some primal scream therapy session, the film allows laymen to vent their pent-up anger in whatever form they choose. Their accusations towards the Church—some true, some false (is that urban legend about Nazi collaboration ever going to go away)—are left mostly unchallenged. There were a number of moments the volunteer catechist inside me wanted to jump out of my seat and scream, “Now wait just a minute!”
But Father James takes a different route. He willingly takes all of the villagers’ verbal blows on himself while attempting to minister to the needs of their souls. That’s not to say James doesn’t have his moment in the garden, so to speak. As the week nears its end and the violence against him moves from the mental to the physical, the priest momentarily falters in his resolve.
And yet, even in these dark moments, the film provides Father James with some hints of grace. After performing the last rites for a dying French tourist, James has a conversation with the man’s wife and realizes there are still people in the world who believe and whose faith lets them see the light even in life’s darkest times. Just as important is the phone call he receives from his daughter and their discussion of virtue and forgiveness. They are small moments, to be sure, but welcome ones, and they are crucial to understanding the final minutes of the movie in any hopeful way.
"Calvary" isn’t going to be a film for everyone. It is not the feel good movie of the Summer. It’s pointed in its criticisms of those within the Church, it’s not too fond of all the people outside the Church either, and what little humor it has never leaves the gallows.
But for me, at least I was left with the distinct impression that, much like the inhabitants of the small town it depicts, the movie really wants the Church to be there. It just wants Her to follow Her own teachings a little closer, because even good people can do better. And if the final scene means what I think it means, what I want it to mean, then there is hope, even in the ugliest of places.
In a world he didn’t create, in a time he didn’t choose, one man looks for signs of God in the world by… watching movies. When he’s not reviewing new releases for Aleteia, David Ives spends his time exploring the intersection of low-budget/cult cinema and Catholicism at The B-Movie Catechism.
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