Film Review: Calvary ****
“The first time I tasted semen I was seven-years-old”
“That’s quite an opening line”
So begins John McDonagh’s Calvary. I settled into my seat and prepared myself to be amazed by another film by the McDonagh brothers whose gift for gab is unmatched by any modern writer, even brother Martin’s hero Quentin Tarantino. Like Tarantino, both brothers have made films that fuse humor and violence, along with their own personal touch of Irish culture and religious iconography. Typical to the McDonagh writing style, meta-lines, like the one above, play with the fact that you’re watching a movie. Yes, the opening line may be a startling opening line in a confession, but it is also the opening line of the film, which John brings to the audience’s attention. Later in the movie, Father James (Brendan Gleeson) and his daughter (Fiona played by Kelly Reilly) talk about the need for a third act surprise in the climax. This is typical of both Martin and John McDonagh. In many ways the brothers also owe their style to the Coens whose Fargo seems to echo in everything they do. However, as John’s new film Calvary continued to press on, I realized the film wasn’t at all what I expected. Those are the only two references to the writing of the film. As a result, Calvary feels more real than most of their works. It doesn’t use its humor nearly as often and as the tone moves away from the likes of Tarantino and the Coen’s Fargo, we end up with something closer to the Coen’s No Country for Old Men. Calvary is a dark testament to the modern world.
That opening scene sets up the dilemma for the rest of the film. The man confessing tells the priest, Father James, (in an Oscar worthy turn by Brendan Gleeson) that he was raped every other day for five years by a priest. This unidentified man decides to kill Father James, not because he is guilty, but because he is innocent. The world has stopped listening to the death of the guilty and they might listen to the death of an innocent. He then asks Father James if he has anything to say to him and prophetically James responds, “No… but I suppose I’ll have something by Sunday next.” The movie is the story of what happens on those seven days as the end closes in around Father James.
The next series of shots, to the best score of the year, takes aerial and majestic views of the Irish coast and ends with an image that sums up the entire movie: a lone surfer out at sea, struggling to swim to the next wave. This is the state of humanity. Calvary is ultimately a movie about being detached and how we are all detached. We then meet a series of locals all suffering from some form of detachment. Veronica (Orla O’Rourke) suffers from being detached from her husband, Jack (Chris O’Dowd) and having an affair. Jack is so detached that at one point he is playing chess with the man he knows is having an affair with his wife. A coroner, Dr. Frank Harte, played by Aidan Gillen, is detached from life itself and at one point tells Father James “excuse me, I have to go kill someone” referring to a terminally ill patient. Father James’ daughter, Fiona, detaches herself by trying to commit suicide. Even Father James’ greeting to his daughter, “you made the common mistake” (slicing across instead of down), shows a detachment to the pain that she’s gone through. Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran), the wealthy self-made man, may be the most detached person at one point proving his detachment by pissing on a painting.
Throughout all of this, Father James tries desperately to hang on to someone / something to save himself from drowning in a world of detachment. In many ways, Father James, knowing that he is going to die on Sunday, takes the same journey Christ does. At first, he tries to be a pastor and do his pastoral duty of ministering his flock. Like Jesus, most meet his sermons with indifference. Then as the time of the end approaches, he loses his temper like Christ did at the temple. Father James slides into despair and interestingly enough, all of the religious images disappear from the film from Thursday to the morning of Sunday.
It is of course Saturday, the day before his confrontation on the beach that we see Father James at his weakest. Like Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, Father James decides to run from his fate. He books a flight to Dublin and is prepared to leave. It is there that God intervenes.
The only completely positive character in the entire movie is a young woman who is a tourist in Ireland, Teresa (Marie-Josee Croze). She and her husband were in a car crash and her husband dies. Father James performs last rights for him and then goes to the chapel with Teresa to pray. It is in this scene that Father James asks her if she is questioning her faith. He says that for many faith is nothing more than a fear of death. She responds that isn’t much of a faith.
At the airport where Father James if fleeing his own death, she arrives as if sent by God. She stands there and we see Father James looking out at the remains of her husband and the detachment the airline employees have to the fact that they are transporting the dead. Father James in that moment must decide whether his faith is merely a fear of death or something more.
Calvary paints an incredibly dark picture of the world. The end is however filled with hope. A single light among the darkness of the world. Father James spiritual journey and the struggle of the town’s people make themselves more than the story of one small town in Ireland. John McDonagh has done something marvelous. A film that feels life like but acts as allegory. It is one of the best achievements of this year.
