Calvary: A Passion Week of his own

Review of Calvary, Directed by  John Michael McDonagh

Credit Calvary, a deliberately paced and otherwise dreary story, for having one of the best inciting incidents of any film this year. It begins with an opening shot of Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) inside a confessional, except the sin being confessed isn’t in the past, it’s in the future.

“I’m going to kill you Father.”

“That’s certainly a startling opening line,” Father James responds in a dark-humored deadpan style that continues throughout the film.

The “confessor” explains how as a child he was raped by a priest day in and day out over the course of five years. He hasn’t sought counseling or filed complaints. For him it isn’t about finding a way to “live with it,” so much as inflicting some sort of revenge on an institution that claims to act as the hands of a loving God. He gives Father James until the next Sunday.

“I’m going to kill you because you’re innocent,” the voice says. “There’s no point in killing a bad priest, but killing a good one? That’d be a shock.”

It’s a brilliant hook. Once set it keeps us engaged with the film as it meanders through the week in a series of scenes that flows something like a stylistic mashup of Quentin Tarantino and Terrence Mallick – brutal and perverse, yet contemplative. The story is set in a dark little corner of the Irish coast, where most pay lip service on Sundays but do what’s right in their own eyes the rest of the week.

The eclectic cast becomes the dark humor of what life must be like for a Catholic priest in an increasingly secularized world. We have the staunchly atheistic, calloused doctor; the millionaire who acquired his wealth by shady means and faces an existential crisis; the estranged daughter bitter at her father for entering the priesthood after her mother passed; the cheeky altar boy swiping wine from the communion supplies; the butcher indifferent to his licentious wife sleeping with the town mechanic; the young male prostitute; the naive priest who has to look up certain words after confession; and the young man contemplating joining the army because he can’t get women to sleep with him.

Father James’ ministry to the town is a mixed bag, and the story swings accordingly back and forth between despair and hope. He seems to genuinely touch a few lives, but aside from the redemption of his estranged daughter, these encounters are “turn the other cheek” moments – locals flaunting their depravity by way of lasciviousness, drugs, and wealth.

It’s hard to decide what sort of tone Calvary strikes at the end as Father James faces an inversed martyrdom – a vengeance that he bears for following God yet also because of the sins of someone else. As a Christ-figure, he attempts to carry the weight of the world. As a finite, fallen man, he can’t. MINOR SPOILER: When finally confronted by the man who threatened him, he faces an impossibly stern test – persuading a horribly victimized man to turn from his wicked ways.

The final, damning question is one for us all: How can you weep over the death of a pet yet bat a dismissive eye when reading stories of sexual abuse? It serves as a powerful indictment – the notion that we could stay detached from such great scandal and pain. But don’t we all do it every day, every time we read a newspaper or surf the web?

It’s almost cliché now to lob this critique at middle-class America, Christian or otherwise. But it hardly stands up to Father James, whose life is full of visitations to people like an aging writer only accessible via motorboat, a French woman whose husband just died, an imprisoned serial killer. Protestants like myself could certainly contest his theology (that’s for another blog post), but not his conviction.

Indeed, if the town’s lone righteous man cannot stand before the victim’s accusations, then the scene teaches the opposite lesson. We can always find guilt with an unbridled use of the James 4:17 card: “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” The world’s problems are as numerous as the stars in the sky. Who can bear it?

For the believer, Calvary reminds us that we do not need to right all wrongs, mourn all sins, and carry all burdens, because we have a God who has already done it. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.