Review: Calvary

Calvary is an Irish black comedy from filmmaker John Michael McDonagh. It tells the story of Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), a priest in rural Sligo who is dismissed or abused by most of the troubled locals despite being an exemplary moral force. His routine is brought to a violent standstill when an unseen villager announces, during confession, that he will kill Lavelle in a week. The anonymous man was abused as a child by a clergyman, and he has chosen an innocent replacement to pay because it will be all the more shocking. Over the next week, we watch Lavelle try to make sense of it all in his troubled parish.

The setting is importantly modern Ireland: society in the grips of a choking recession whilst simultaneously shedding its Catholic bearings. The characters all struggle with everyday spiritual questions without organised religion acting as the main moral force. People look to money, drugs, drink and other instant vices to provide comfort against a carefully-shot backdrop of green mountains and crumbling white cottages. Despite the rural locale, it is a place where there is open disrespect toward priests, immigration (albeit minimal) and juvenile serial killers. I suspect that this national introspection was a main concern of McDonagh's.

Various nefarious locals exude auras of ill-intent, a la most films set in the countryside, with a Celtic undertone that’s reminiscent of The Wicker Man. We have a pseudo-aristocratic former banker, a sadistic doctor, a brooding African mechanic, a masochistic adulterer, an angry ex-copper and more. Gleeson must be lavishly praised for his performance. The cast is superb (IT Crowd dork Christ O’Dowd in particular), but it is the burly lead who so subtly captures a man in turmoil. His cracked, sympathetic facial expressions single him out amongst the rest, who struggle unsuccessfully to combat their own problems. They are often framed awkwardly, either threateningly dominating the screen or perched lurking in the corners.

I suspect that the film is stuffed full of religious references and theological thoughts, and that the more you watch it the more you uncover. Certainly many of the seven deadly sins are displayed by the villagers, from gluttony (boozing and drug-taking) to lust (cardinal preoccupation) to wrath (murder). The title refers to Christ’s crucifixion location, but is Lavelle as ready to sacrifice himself in the midst of taunting sinners? To its great credit, Calvary doesn’t preach: it is spiritual investigation of a subject which is generally argued along entrenched, political lines. A bit like a gentle parish priest instead of the usual fire and brimstone pulpit zealotry. The whodunit element (for the potential assassin remains secret) is not of particular importance, nor is the violence, being more a way of tying the plot together with an urgency and sinister undercurrent.

Calvary is on an instant level about the Church, its abuses and organised religion generally. But beneath that superficial subject, the film is more of an examination of the human condition, and attempts to find solutions for all the inexplicable horror of life. This is much like religion. A superb and entertaining film more concerned with stimulating thought than cheap thrills.