Sunday Review: Calvary

Don't presume

By Morris Dean

St. Augustine wrote somewhere that the reader should not despair, for one of the two thieves [being crucified the same day as Jesus] was saved. Nor should the reader presume, for the other thief was damned.
The 2014 film Calvary (directed by John Michael McDonagh) seems to pose the question, Who in this story is saved, and who is damned?
    The story's central character is a good Catholic priest, Father James, played by prolific Irish actor Brendan Gleeson, who also starred in McDonagh's 2011 film, The Guard. (McDonagh has said that Calvary is tonally "in the same darkly comedic vein as The Guard, but with a much more serious and dramatic narrative.")
    Calvary opens with a long scene of Father James in the confessional on a Sunday morning. A man we only hear enters the opposite booth and reports having been raped by a priest every other day from the age of seven to twelve. Father James is stunned but willing to listen, to help however he can. Did the man report the priest?
    No, the man didn't report the priest, and he isn't looking for help. He announces that he's going to kill Father James the following Sunday and asks him to meet him down at the beach.
    We of course wonder, Why Father James?
    The offending priest died a few years ago, and "What would be the point in killing that bastard anyway?" the man says. "There's no point. But killing a good one – that would be a shock; they wouldn't know what to make of that. I'm going to kill you, Father."
    Father James, who thinks he recognized the man's voice, consults his superior, who advises him to report the man to the police, because he didn't seek absolution, he wasn't contrite. But, "The choice is yours."

What happens during the week involves a hugely interesting collection of individuals:

• a local millionaire financier who refers to himself as a "fallen colossus" who either feels, or thinks he ought to feel, guilty about all of the money he has stolen (played by Dylan Moran)
• a young man contemplating either suicide or joining the army because he's a loser when it comes to getting girls (played by Killian Scott)
• an attractive young wife so openly pursuing an adulterous affair that she even teases Father James sexually about it (played by Orla O'Rourke)
• the black mechanic she's having the affair with (played by Isaach De Bankolé)
• her husband, the local butcher (played by Chris O'Dowd), who isn't the one beating his wife — it's her boyfriend

  

  Father James with Jack Brennan

• the local police inspector (played by Gary Lydon), who is stationed there because he was reassigned rather than commended after arresting a pedophile priest
• a homosexual prostitute flagrantly abusive of priests and decorum (played by Owen Sharpe)
• a local pub keeper (played by Pat Shortt) whose jibes against the Church haven't hurt his business among the parishioners
• a medical doctor (played by Aidan Gillen) who is openly atheistic and admits he's only one part humanist but nine parts gallows humor

  

  with Dr. Harte

• a French woman whose husband has been killed in an automobile accident and must see to the return of his body to France (played by Marie-Josée Croze)
• a mass murderer whom Father James visits in prison who says that he would like to help the family of one of his victims by telling them where the victim is buried but he can't remember (played by Domhnall Gleeson)
• an aging writer who asks Father James to obtain a gun for him so he can kill himself when the time comes (played by M. Emmet Walsh)
• Father James's daughter (played by Kelly Reilly), who has recently attempted suicide and thinks he has neglected her since her mother died and he became a priest, and whom he tells there's too much talk about sins, not enough about virtues, the highest of which is forgiveness.

  

  Fiona with her father

During the week, even while Father James pursues his calling of being of service, he hears a number of cracks and criticisms of the Church, and of himself personally for being a priest. Here are some of the ones that I am able to decipher from my notes:
    Father James's fellow priest advises him not to get involved in the case of the adulterous wife [with the black mechanic]. "The Church can't get involved in matters of diversity."
    The millionaire comments apropos a donation he has made, "It would be a black day altogether when the Catholic Church is no longer interested in money."
    The homosexual prostitute makes a suggestive remark about pedophile priests.
    The local police inspector tells Father James that the pedophile priest he arrested had been reassigned too, to Africa. "He could do whatever he wanted over there."
    The local publican tells Father James that the bank has foreclosed and he's going to lose his pub. "How come you never preach about that?...But the Catholic Church screwed the Jews and collaborated with the Nazis, so it'd be the pot calling the kettle black."
    After the parish church burns down, they're sifting through the ashes for clues. Someone asks who would do this, and suggests it's someone with a grudge against the Church. The police inspector objects, "That could be half the country."

    When the millionaire comes to make his donation, he says he's sure the Church needs all the help it can get, and when asked why he says that, he replies, "With all the compensation that's been paid out over the past few years [for claims of abuse by priests]. At least in the States, but we know they weren't the worst."
    Walking along a lane, Father James chats with a young girl going the same way. As they approach the road where the lane ends, her father drives up, jumps out, and asks him accusingly what he's doing talking with his daughter. Without waiting for a response, he ushers her into his car and speeds off.
    On Friday night at the pub, Jack the butcher leans over to Father James and asks in mock confidentiality, "So, you're sure there's a god then, Father, yeah? I'm asking 'cause I have doubts myself. A crisis of faith."
    The medical doctor graphically describes the situation of a young boy who was rendered blind, deaf, dumb, and paralized by an anaesthetist's mistake during surgery. "He's in the dark, he can't hear anything, he can't move, he can't cry out, and no one's coming to his rescue [like a boy being raped by a priest]."
    Down at the beach the following Sunday morning, having already been shot once, Father James is asked whether he cried whenever he heard the reports about priests and children....
    In the final scene, Father James's daughter visits her father's killer in prison. She looks at him compassionately through the window as she picks up the visitor's phone....

I think the answer Calvary gives to the question suggested by St. Augustine is that it's the Catholic Church that is damned, including its good priests who did nothing about the crimes of the bad ones. And the ones saved are their executioners; they can be forgiven.

Copyright © 2015 by Morris Dean