MOVIE REVIEW: CALVARY (2014)

 

 

"IT'S A STORY ABOUT FORGIVENESS, change and renewal.

In the beginning, yes, Father James meets a series of unrelentingly awful people, all of whom he suspects of wanting to kill him. None of them are worthy of Father James' comfort and he chooses to abandon his vocation.

Except he realises that the millionaire Michael is simply hurting. When Father James recognises Michael's genuine pain and asks for forgiveness from his daughter, he realises again the importance of his life, work and the power of spirituality to bring comfort to those lost and seemingly damaged.

That is why he returns. And that is why Fiona seems ready to open up and at least listen to the murderer of her father.

The film argues that salvation and forgiveness is possible for even those who themselves believe that they have crossed a moral precipice. The murderer thinks that the church is beyond redemption and needs to be destroyed. Father James believed that people are beyond lost and need to be abandoned. The film argues that both views are wrong and it is only through change that we can begin to heal and stop hurting others (and ourselves).” (Sharaz__Jek)

 

 STATEMENT OF INTENTION

 

Sharaz__Jek, in the above Reddit column, provides us with a helpful synopsis of Calvary. And, here, I would only add a couple of points: Early in the movie, Father James Lavelle, a priest in the small town of Easkey in northwest Ireland, receives a parishioner’s confession. We don’t see who it is, but what he says is shocking, detailing how, as a child, he was sexually abused by his parish priest, whose crimes were never exposed. The parishioner has harboured a deep hatred and loathing for the Catholic church and its clergy since that time. Decades later, he yearns for revenge and announces in the confessional that he will kill Father James in one week. His is not a confession, it is a statement of intent. He chose Father James because he is a “good” priest, and his revenge would be more complete, in his eyes, because of that fact. The movie chronicles the last days of Father James’s life.

I CONFESS (no pun intended) that Calvary was a bit of a surprise. I thought I would be seeing the stereotypical Irish priest we are so accustomed to see on film—brusque, a bit of a tippler, having the gift of the gab, acts as a spiritual lighting rod, and is a solver of problems big and small within his parish. Father James, on the other hand, is a recovering alcoholic. He has come to his vocation late in life following the death of his wife. He has an adult daughter, Fiona, herself plagued by a life of bad choices and relationships, and she has recently attempted suicide. The two have been estranged for years, with Father James critical of her lifestyle and her attempts at suicide which, according to church teachings, is a mortal sin. Fiona visits James during this time hoping for a reconciliation between them. At one point she says his alcoholism during her childhood alienated her, as did his later vocation which proved a barrier rather than a bridge between them.

 

IN THE MOVIE, the dialogue is rich and the banter plentiful with humorous asides, quips and witticisms from the townspeople and Father James. But there is an element of malice beneath the words. The dialogues invariably tend toward criticism, veiled and demonstrable, or ridicule, disbelief even anger with, and disparaging assessments of, the Church and Father Jame’s vocation. These last days prove to be his Calvary. I agree with Sharaz when they say Father James has lost his vocation. By this point, he sees his parishioners as irredeemable; they will do what they will with their lives despite his advice, spiritual and otherwise, and there is little he can do to change their ways. His relationship with them has become pro forma, a perfunctory gesture, formulaic, futile. And they know it. Perhaps another way of putting it is that he has lost his love for his fellow man. One example of this is when he visits a deranged murderer in prison who says he wants to confess. After listening to him, Father James tells the killer that to make a genuine confession one must be truly contrite, something he deems lacking in the killer, who he leaves to his madness without performing the Confessional rite. However, it is shortly afterwards that he has a heart-felt talk with Fiona. They reconcile after he asks her to forgive him for not understanding—for not trying to understand—the depths of her despair and for not engaging with her when she needed him most— growing up and as a young adult. In an emotionally charged scene the two express their love for the other and Father James is heartbroken when she returns to Dublin.

The final straw that breaks him is an accusation that he was attempting to ‘groom’ a young girl he met on a walk to the beach. He is undone by this experience and falls into a deepening “dark night of the soul” with his spiritual life and the secular world around him never more at loggerheads. He goes to the village pub and begins drinking. The village doctor, an ardent atheist and perhaps the most “unrelentingly awful” of all the people Father James encounters, tells Father James a horrific tale of a young patient whose prognosis post-treatment is a "living hell". The priest is shattered and asks the doctor why would he tell him such a terrible story. The doctor doesn’t answer but the subtext is clear: What kind of God would make a child suffer so? How can you believe in such a God? There is no God.What say you to that, priest?  Enraged by yet another assault on his vocation and beliefs, Father James nearly attacks the doctor. Instead, he drinks far into the night, shoots-up the bar with a revolver*, and ends battered and bloodied in a brawl with the tavern keeper.

 

FORGIVENESS

   

THE NEXT DAY, he decides he will quit the priesthood and flee from his rendezvous with death. He drives to the regional airport for a flight to Dublin. There he meets the wife of a tourist who’d died in Easkey. Earlier in the week Father James had performed the Last Rites for him as he lay comatose in hospital. Accompanying her late-husband's coffin, she says she is taking her husband “home”. The young widow had a quiet dignity and unwavering faith in God and the Church, and as devastated as she was, nevertheless she says she will “keep going on”. As they talk, the two watch from inside the terminal as her husband’s coffin is loaded by baggage handlers into the plane's cargo hold like..well, baggage. The lack of reverence, of any regard for the transcendent in the modern world, the cold, secular world filled with cynics, skeptics, unbelievers, idolaters, and haters was encapsulated in that quiet scene at the airport.

 

INSPIRED by her faith and her will to persevere, Father James returns to Easkey to resume his pastoral duties. On the morning of his death, he phones Fiona to talk to her one last time. He says there has been too much talk of sin and not enough about virtue. Asked what he thought was the greatest virtue, he replies "forgiveness". Each then forgives the other and Father James leaves the rectory for the last time and walks to his final destination.

As he walks through town he encounters Gerald, the elderly American writer, who asks if he can join him on his walk. Father James says no, given what he is about to face. Gerald takes it as a rebuff and turns to walk away, but Father James asks him if he’s finished his book. Gerald says yes but he wasn’t sure if it was any good. Father James said it will be “extraordinary” and that Gerald was a very fine writer, cheering the old man greatly. As with Fiona, Father James gives solace and affirms the Gerald’s value and sanctity in the world. 

 

HE WALKS TO THE CLIFFS overlooking the wild Atlantic and tosses the gun away; he will go unarmed to meet his executioner. There, he encounters Michael, a wealthy banker who contemplates suicide because life has no meaning for him anymore. Father James consoles him, embracing him, and promises he will come by his home later to talk with him. Another soul is touched, another spirit lifted by the priest who has learned that his greatest goal is to honour others, to understand and accept who they are and to love them unconditionally.

 

FINALLY, he walks to the beach where we see a figure approaching. It is the town butcher, Jack Brennan. Here, I disagree with Sharez__Jek. I think Father James knew all along it was Jack who would come for him. It makes sense of some of the looks, venom, and veiled threats passing between the two in the days leading up to the priest’s murder. Father James tells Jack it’s not too late, that he doesn’t have to kill him. Jack disagrees saying it’s ordained, unstoppable. He's wrong, of course, there are always choices that can be made.The priest looks at Jack, refusing to look away as the butcher raises his revolver. Father James's gaze is open, accepting what will come and, at the same time, accepting Jack unconditionally, loving him even as Jack murders him. Jack cannot meet the priest's gaze and turns away as he pulls the trigger.

The movie ends with short depictions of the people whose lives Father James had touched. Most seem to be living much as before. It is with Fiona, Gerald, Michael, the young altar boy who witnesses the shooting and, perhaps, Jack that moments  of grace are achieved.¹

 

The final scene is of Fiona visiting Jack in prison. She is seated in the glassed-off booth with a phone link prisoners use to talk with their visitors. She is calm, her gaze is tearful, and like her father’s, it is open, accepting. She will listen to him without reservation. Jack is terrified of her, barely able to approach the booth and sit. (I had the image of a devil, brought from the dark depths to the surface, blinded by the light of a world he had long ago abandoned.) What frightens Jack the most, I think, is he knows she will forgive his unforgivable act. And then where will he be? What will he be? The road to redemption is always there even if it can be a difficult and rocky one.

 

MY APOLOGIES for the length of this review. I kept trying to describe the movie (some gorgeous scenery, BTW). I could have simply said it’s a good watch, all-in-all.

 

CHEERS, JAKE.

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* At the beginning of the movie, Father James drops off some groceries to Gerald Ryan, an elderly American novelist who is writing a book in a cottage near town. He asks Father James for a gun with the unspoken purpose of using it to end his life if he were to become disabled. Father James said he would try to get him one. He does but, instead, keeps the revolver. He clearly means to keep it for self-protection against his would-be assassin.  Which is why he had a gun with him at the pub. 

👉It also reminds the viewer that Father James is on his own spiritual journey. He is human, with all the fralities and faults that entails. On his late night drive back from the airport he accepts the fact that he will face his own Golgotha the next day and he quietly prepares for whatever is to come.

 

1. Not everyone in town is changed by their relationship with Father James. Not everyone accepts or seeks unconditional love or expresses it. Moments of grace, the film tells us, are few and far between in life; they should be cherished and encouraged whenever they occur.

 

👉For GoT fans: Doctor Frank Harte (a misnomer if ever there ever was one), who believes in the sanctity of no one, is a cold and heartless character. An ending tableau after Father James’s murder has the good doctor standing in an autopsy room. He is smoking a cigarette. There is a stainless-steel bowl on the counter in front of him containing what looks like a human heart and upon which he butts out his cigarette. He is someone you’d like to punch in his stupid face, if truth be told.

But FYI, the actor portraying Dr. Harte played Littlefinger in GoT, also someone you’d like to punch in the face.

 

P.S. I just had an annoying thought: Are we to assume the heart is Father James’s?  Conceivably the priest could have been autospied in Easkey by Dr. Harte who sees human beings as machines that eventually break down, no more, no less. And no matter how he might ‘excavate’ Father James’s body, he will never encounter the priest's soul, nor come to regard his own.

 

 

P.P.S. A nice touch in the film is this landscape shot of Father James's altar boy painting the seascape in the moments before the priest is murdered. While Jack strides along the beach to meet his fate, Father James simply waits. The boy's painting is unfinished, the future is open, the last dab of colour has yet to be applied, if at all. Free will and choice are always at play; nothing is pre-ordained as Jack believes.