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.

_____________________________________ 

 

* 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.
 

 

 

SCORE ONE FOR ELON MUSK

 

WELL, I STAND CORRECTED. Just when I thought I had billionaires figured out—that they were a bunch of narcissistic psychopaths, who would stop at nothing to further their agendas of acquisition and exploitation, and the best thing that could happen to the rest of us would be for the lot of them to board a rocket ship to Mars and start a colony there, as one of their lot says he means to do someday. [Problem, though, for our pampered overlords: no indigenous lifeforms to exploit on the red planet—that we know of! Ed.]  

AND just when I’d come to see the billionaire class as a bane on existence and a blot on humanity, Elon Musk, posted this reply to investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Green Greenwald’s apt X-post the other day complaining about the sycophantic, soft-ball interviews most Western journalists conduct with Ukraine’s President Zelensky, shallow and uncritical puff-pieces one and all.

😆 But, I nearly woofed my morning tea all over my keyboard when I read Munk’s reply. Maybe there’s hope for the rich bastards after all?👇

 

Cheers, Jake.  

 

 

 

QUOTES: HERMAN HESSE

 

ONE LITTLE, TWO LITTLE, THREE LITTLE PSYCHOPATHS, FOUR LITTLE, FIVE...

I READ an interesting Psychology Today article by Steve Taylor, PhD recently about the type of people who are attracted to high political office and the type of governments they form. Not surprisingly (or perhaps it does come as something of a surprise), people with narcissistic personalities are attracted to positions of power. So are psychopaths. Narcissists and psychopaths share several personality traits in common: Both lack empathy for other people, both have an exaggerated sense of self worth and superiority, and they desire power and control over others as a way of demonstrating their superior nature, and to maintain their dominance. Narcissists, Steve explains, differ from psychopaths in that they also want adulation and fawning respect from others, and their tendency towards autocratic or dictatorial rule may be tempered or softened by their overweening need to have others ‘love’ them. [Trump, Trudeau anyone? Ed.] Psychopaths, on the other hand, have no such need for public recognition or love. Like narcissists, they lack empathy towards others, feel superior to them in every way, and seek power and dominance at any cost, it's just that narcissists in positions of power tend to want to put a smile face on things. 

 
POLISH psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski called societies such individuals create “pathocracies”, ones that are ruled by the pathologically ill. Having lived in Poland under the Nazis during WWII and in the decades following the war under communism, he experienced first-hand what life is like under such regimes. Taking a broader perspective, he pondered why it was that throughout human history war, strife, cruelty and conflict—what the historian Arnold Toynbee called the "horrifying sense of sin manifest in human affairs,”—always seemed to be present. In his book, “Political Ponerology", which is a study* of such societies, LOBACZEWSKI examines the founders and supporters of oppressive regimes, and “the common factors that lead to the propagation of man’s inhumanity to man [where] morality and humanism cannot long withstand the predations of this evil.”

Simply put, he wanted to understand why evil people succeeded, and yet so many good and moral people seemed to fall behind. The answer is that people who are ruthless and ambitious, and devoid of empathy have an advantage over people who have higher levels of empathy and compassion and, in addition, typically shun positions of power, choosing to develop communal relationships instead, thus leaving those positions of power ripe for the taking by pathologically ill persons. Of course, not every holder of power in politics, in business, academia, the media, prisons/institutions etc., has a psychopathy, but these are the breeding grounds where a greater percentage than the average are found.

ARGUABLY, "pathocracies", when they form, have been the bane of their citizens throughout recorded history. 

 

Ironically, it is the modern age that might be the most favourable for those narcissists and psychopaths among us. During the ages of feudalism and monarchical rule, natural-born psychopaths would have found it challenging to rise into positions of power because societies were highly stratified (feudal) or they were ones that transferred power via a royal lineage (i.e., hereditary succession). Still there were plenty of psychopathic Machiavellis and powers behind the throne to go around.  But it is modern democracies with their greater range of personal freedoms, voting rights, avenues for advancement, exploitable laws etc., that offer narcissists and psychopaths greater access to the reins of power. American foreign policy framers and high State Department officials surely are symptomatic of such a pathology, one that is poisoning American democracy? [And Wall Street?! Don’t get him started! Ed.]

 

OF COURSE, once in power, such pathologically ill people will do everything in their power to eliminate, damage, or neuter the very institutions and people they controlled and manipulated while obtaining their positions. Democracies that are open and participatory for all citizens in a fair and transparent manner are anathema to psychopaths and narcissists because they threaten their hold on power. Such people are found at all strata of society. More men than women tend to develop psychopathy and around 1% of the adult population is estimated to have the disorder to some degree, which means that roughly 1 in 100 people you meet is a psychopath. Heads up!

 

Professor Taylor, in his PT article, suggests one way to maintain the health of society (or university, business, or whatever) is to ensure democratic structures and processes remain secure and vibrant, and to become familiar with the signs and symptoms of the pathologically ill, so you won’t be conned by their false charm and harmful manipulations. He argues for the creation of a board of examiners who would assess contenders’ fitness for political office, weeding out the ones who have psychopathic tendencies, thus protecting society from their despotic impulses. Hmmm? I’ll put a pin in that and circle back later.

 

FOLKS, if we as a collective cannot decide how to build a fair and equitable society based on mutual respect and compassion, then maybe we will need to revisit Steve’s proposal. And not to be too hard on him,  I still think there must be a better way to go about things. Think for a moment: An unelected, anonymous psychiatric cabal body deciding who can and cannot be admitted to the ranks of leadership in society—what could go wrong? (Perhaps Steve should take the test, to play it safe. Just sayin’.)

 

 

Cheers, Jake.

 ________________________________________________________

 

* “Ponerology” is derived from the Greek word poneros, from the branch of theology dealing with the study of evil.

 

AND how do you protect yourself when you encounter a psychopath, remembering that one in a hundred of the people you meet are potentially psychopathic?  In a lecture given by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, he suggests that the only way to truly combat a psychopath’s abuse (which he calls “malevolence”) is to activate your “inner psychopath”, to accept that part of you--a small part, but it’s there--is exactly like the full-fledged psychopath confronting you, and that you are, indeed, capable of malice and greed, and malevolence just as they are.

Except yours can be held in check, examined, channeled in productive ways, and from a greater awareness about your own potential towards psychopathy, you can better understand the forces that shape and drive the illness, and recognize the coercions, the tricks and lies, the scams and shams, the violence and the need to destroy and dominate that are exhibited by the psychopath, and how you might better defend yourself from them.

 

“In life, you need to be able to withstand tragedy and to withstand malevolence...And the worst snake of all is malevolence.”

“By definition, if someone psychopathic has exploited you, you are too naïve. If you say, well that’s no fault of mine how could I be prepared? Fair enough…[it’s] a perfectly reasonable objection, but it doesn’t solve your problem. Because it’s an internal problem…”

“Without the potential [in yourself] for mayhem, you’re a potential victim of mayhem.” (Peterson, 2017)

 

 

MEANWHILE, 'AVE A LISTEN HERE and HERE.

 

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FALL NOTE

NEWS OF THE WORLD #26

Should I begin with all the begots? 

From the beginning and skip the nots?

There’s much today we’d rather forgot. 

Still, where to begin, if not with rot.

…..

Were you surprised our age once was wise?

With sages on-call sunset to rise,

Our mages prescribed, divined, devised

Bright futures for all under blue skies.

Did I say futures? Perhaps just one—

Bright as the light of a midnight sun.

Bundled and spindled while it is spun,

Cloth like the wind or the great sea’s run.

And of that future? Well, it’s your past.

(Lest you’re reading this prosy poem last.)

We’d learned not to breathe after the Blast,

When the world turned over, sere and vast.

…..

There’s some delight, this not being right:

The pressure is off the blind for sight.

Like a boxer’s last count ends his fight,

Gifting the fallen a peaceful night.

For we’d lost our marbles, boiled in pots.

Just like froggy when it grew too hot.

WASTELANDS-Я-US—it’s Paradise Not!

Brown is the hue of our once-blue spot.

…..

Our rulers ruled earth once more was flat,

Drawing new lines ‘top those that once sat

‘Neath others some war had once begat,

While knocking the rest in a cocked hat.

“CORRUPTION ON EARTH!” was the latest charge,

Made to hold souls and those still at large

And all who would board Charon’s last barge

Liable for grace and early discharge. 

 

As did laws that kept shadows of sin

Far from the steeples we huddled in,

Where bishops taught lest pupils might win

Their place in the sun and freedom’s skin.

…..

War drums sound like the baying of hounds.

Cannons rally and fire their rounds.

Bombs in the churchyards, in fields and towns,

Leave behind stains and furious frowns.

 

Who does not rage such a dismal age!

When books that are written page by page

Tell of a world that’s more than a gage,

More than a vault and more than a cage.

…..

Future, when musing our times gone by,

Will you please tell them that we did try?

And though we'd wrecked both the earth and sky, 

Our gift's still a place that's warm and dry.

 

 

 I THOUGHT it best to GET FALL OVER WITH, as the white stuff is starting to blow round the corners of my house and across the driveway, adding a  light frosting of winter, with the promise of much more to come. And so, I WAS OUT WALKING in the park near where I live earlier last month, and crossing a field, I happened upon this beautiful tree lit by the afternoon sun. Its branches held thick layers of leaves and a breeze made gentle ripples flow throughout the brilliant canopy, almost like a coral reef, with its colourful fronds and tubes and sea grasses swaying in the currents, back and forth.

I WANTED A PICTURE of the scene, to remind me of the near perfect sun and autumn colours, but I had left my camera in the car and didn’t want to go back to get it. But, I was determined to return the next day and take a few snapshots. And, wouldn't you know, it was cloudy and rainy the rest of the week. When I got back to the park it was dry and sunny again and, armed with my camera, I went in search of my tree. OF COURSE, dear reader, one day is not the same as another, and the moment had invariably passed. THE TREE'S VIVID COLOURS weren’t quite what they had been  earlier. The canopy seemed a little sparer, the afternoon light a little paler, and there was little breeze around to stir the leaves into motion. I took this picture any way, because the tree is BEAUTIFUL; it’s just that I didn’t share in its beauty like I had earlier.

“You can’t go home again.” You can’t “step into the same river twice”. And you can’t keep a moment no matter how hard you try. It's bound to slip though your fingers like sand and all you can do is notice it in passing.

THE TREE in the photograph is beautiful, though it’s not the same tree that earlier made me stop and look.  And I am not the same person as I was a few days ago. Nor will I, the tree, the day, the breeze, or time be the same a few days hence. That's just the way it goes.  “Ain’t life unkind”, as the song says.*

 

Cheers, Jake.

_____________________________________

 

* Now to do another post on the war in Ukraine! It seems like other wars, only different, somehow. 

 

 

 

 

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