The Catholic Church hasn’t exactly had a smooth go of it the last couple decades, much of it self-inflicted. As more news of their hidden agendas and scandals comes to the surface, the Church has struggled to maintain a moral high ground with even its most loyal followers. Things have gotten so bad that the movies have started taking out the good priests along with the bad. Brendan Gleeson’s priest in Calvary is actually well thought of by the town, but present circumstances point to him being the last of a dying breed. Calvary uses the church’s predicament and Gleeson’s stoic performance as the backbone for its very strong but very dark story.
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) gets a jolt in confessional to start the film: a man threatens to murder him next Sunday on the beach. James is taken aback, mostly because people in his Irish town respect him. However, little problems keep building up over the course of the week: his followers hollowly listen to him, his second in command Father Leary (David Wilmot) is a pushover, his past apprentice insists on visits in prison for horrendous crimes, confessions of sin are given without any regret, and his daughter (Kelly Reilly) from his pre-priest life has personal demons she needs help fighting. In addition, his would-be murderer starts to lash out at things he loves as Sunday draws nearer.
As far as I’m concerned, Calvary represents the nail in the coffin to the Catholic Church. All the years of silent abuse to the people they were supposed to be serving is being put upon Father James. Writer/Director John Michael McDonagh (brother of Martin, who did In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths) slowly builds tension through the whodunit of the town suspects. Through Father James’s walkthroughs, we see the broken armor the priest is carrying. People use confessionals to show off shamelessness more than actually feeling sorry for their actions. Atheists infiltrate Ireland as doctors. The minorities (women/children) stand up for themselves readily instead of being chastised. Calvary nicely showcases how people’s personal projections of the Catholic priest are now seen as an impossible standard for every clergyman to hold themselves to. Heck, even when sermon’s are great, the bar owner is pissed that Father James doesn’t preach enough about greed when the bank interferes in his pub. Sure, there’s a few lives that Father James affects, but those people are fleeting or usually in the middle of an extreme crisis. Despite the priest’s best intentions and good work, past sins prohibit him from having a lasting impression on the populous, a supremely cynical point of view Calvary flaunts callously.
Calvary also functions well as a thriller. McDonagh wisely sets this movie in Ireland in a lonely coastal town. The movie carefully sets up pretty much the entire town with some sort of reason to be angry with either James or the church itself. Conversations are filled with dark humor, with the audience uneasily laughing on. Isolation infuses Father James’s walks, punctuated by a stiff breeze trying to blow the man over. That loneliness slowly transitions to dread as Sunday approaches, with jarring acts against the priest causing him to do double takes of paranoia as he walks around. Though the reveal is predictable because of casting, the slow build to the reveal is agonizing at points due to careful plotting and a building sense of callous dread despite Father James’s best intentions for the town.
Most people know Brendan Gleeson as Mad Eye Moody from the Harry Potter films: that ginger hair is hard to miss. Gleeson gives Father James a strong moral code with deep understanding of the world he lives in. I’m not a religious person, in part because there weren’t enough realistic charismatic priests Gleeson easily portrays. Gleeson is the rock of Calvary. Kelly Reilly is solid as Gleeson’s daughter, clearly hurt by her father but caring for the man. Thriller support is given by a host of weirdos, among them Patty O’Dowd, Aiden ‘Littlefinger’ Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach de Bankole, M. Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josee Croze, and Gleeson’s son Domhnall. Winner of the creeper fest though is Killian Scott, who gets two GREAT scenes playing straight and drops the mic.
Calvary is not for the believer; it is for the recent college grad who got WAY into nihilism. This cynical, bleak boiler of a film is a strong showcase of Brendan Gleeson and his Irish charm, or a roast of the Catholic Church and all of its faults. It also compares an engineering degree to a strong desire to murder people; John Michael McDonagh must have spend long hours in a lab by himself somewhere.