Calvary (2014)

My period of abstention from the Hollywood blockbuster machine continues, and I'm feeling rather proud of myself. I weakened, once - snuck into the spare room for a crafty re-watch of Avengers Assemble - but all that happened was that I emerged half an hour later feeling guilty and slightly sick. It's like any diet, I suppose; on the plus side, it makes you feel pleasantly virtuous, but on the other hand, it does require a certain level of planning and forethought. No more idle browsing of the weekend listings, for instance, because the chances of finding anything suitable before the small hours are as close to nothing as makes no odds.

Fortunately, I'd been meaning to watch Calvary for quite some time, so this was the perfect excuse. I'm a huge fan of director John Michael McDonagh's The Guard, so when I heard he was doing a new piece that also starred Brendan Gleason, I couldn't help but be excited.

Despite the avid insistence of my subconscious, the word Calvary doesn't actually mean That Canadian City Where They Held The Winter Olympics In 1988. It's actually another name for Golgotha, the site of Jesus' crucifixion, and is sometimes used as a shorthand to represent great emotional torment. That's certainly the case here, where our protagonist Father James (Gleason), a Catholic priest from the Irish town of Sligo, is informed during the film's opening moments that in one week's time, he will be murdered. He hears this via the relative anonymity of the confessional booth, as one of his parishioners relates recollections of childhood sexual abuse - the would-be murderer knows James is a good priest, but this, he insists, is precisely the point. Who, after all, would really care if a paedophile dies?

James knows the identity of the man on the other side of the screen, although he declines to share it; instead, Calvary tracks his progress during the week that ensues, as he goes about his day-to-day business in a town that isn't sure whether it truly has a need any more for him or for what he represents.

The good

The very first thing I noticed about Calvary was the pacing. It's not slow, not exactly, but McDonagh isn't in any huge hurry, either, always giving us plenty of time to work out what's going on and absorb the atmosphere of any given moment. After the nonstop sensory onslaught of the big-budget blockbusters of the holiday period, this felt like a genuine relief. It's a film to be savoured and pondered upon, with performances, in general, thoroughly deserving of this more measured approach. 

As might be expected, Gleason is magnificent as that rarest of creatures - a thoroughly decent movie priest. He imbues James with an easygoing good nature that reminded me of The Dude, happy to spend time with anybody and slow to pass judgement. With his sports car and his golden retriever, Bruno, he presents a figure to arouse goodwill in even the most ardent atheist. It's his film, completely, but able support is provided by the likes of Aidan Gillen as the atheist doctor, and Dylan Moran as the local millionaire.

The Irish landscape, too, has a vital role to play, remote, beautiful and ultimately unknowable. McDonagh acknowledges this, providing long, sweeping shots that practically enable the viewer to feel the slicing coastal winds. Sligo might be a part of civilisation, it suggests, but it's definitely on the outer edges, and its inhabitants are never too far from savagery. I'm probably not offering too much in the way of spoilers when I suggest that James' flock all have their dark secrets - this is a small rural town in a film, after all - and there are times when the setting feels like nothing so much as a remote outpost beyond the reach of the law.

The bad

A lot of critics seem not to have had a negative word to say about this one, and I can see why - it's the sort of movie critics tend to like. I liked it, too, after a fashion, but after the gorgeous modern mythology of The Guard, I still felt slightly disappointed. Calvary didn't quite satisfy me as either allegory or straight drama; it was too subtle for the former and too bold for the latter. Instead, I felt it occupied a slightly awkward middle ground where certain players overdid it in a faintly embarrassing fashion; as Leo the rent boy, Owen Sharpe was one of them, and Chris O'Dowd's boorish butcher was another.

All in all, for a film that dealt in such weighty matters as child sex abuse and loss of faith, I felt it was a little, well, slender, with characters drawn in broad brush strokes held together by a relatively flimsy narrative line. As sometimes happens in these cases, I find myself wondering what might have been left on the cutting room floor; 100 minutes isn't a long time, and I feel the subject matter and the style could both have supported a longer runtime.

The verdict

An enjoyably thoughtful piece, with Gleason on top form. Might not be all it's cracked up to be, but it remains well worth a look nevertheless.