Calvary (15.)
Directed by John Michael McDonagh.
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Chris O’ Dowd, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole and M. Emmet Walsh. 100 mins
As a rule films with a biblical reference in their title should be treated with scepticism. But McDonagh’s follow up to The Guard has an unusual and unsettling force that makes it equal to being named after history’s most famous place of execution.
In many ways, Calvary is just like The Guard. It crackles with fantastic dialogue; is darkly funny and provides a dynamic central role for Brendan Gleeson. It is also though a very weighty examination of the value and purpose of faith, particularly a faith expressed through the uniform of an establishment, the Roman Catholic church, which has been tarnished by paedophile priests and a long history of corruption. It also seems to question the kind of casual nihilism and gallows humour that was at the heart of The Guard and which has replaced faith as the default modern coping mechanism.
In the opening scene an Irish parish priest, Gleeson, has his life threatened in the confessional. So the film is set up as a Who’lldoit. There are a range of suspects – though he is a good and genuine man he is resented and hated by everybody in the community. The opening half hour is riotously funny and Gleeson’s Father James is a potentially marvellous comic creation: a self-aware, straight talking but sincere man of God, with a mordant sense of irony. He wants his story to stay in the surrounds of a black comedy, but the scorn and resentments of his parishioners is such that they refuse to play along with the genre. The laughs gradually wither away to leave a very dark and serious drama.
London born McDonagh is a mighty talent and just about the only filmmaker addressing the depth and misery of Ireland’s contemporary crisis and how it is limping along after having been betrayed by all of its major institutions. He’s primarily a wordsmith but his visual sense is none too shoddy - the film gives us a bleak but beautiful vision of the Sligo landscape – and he gets the most out of his cast. His dialogue is the key though; inserting a dark deadpan cynicism between the jolly yardsticks of Irish speech, the Right sos, the good on yas. The film has a great cast but this dialogue is so strong it practically acts itself.
Directed by John Michael McDonagh.
Starring Brendan Gleeson, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Chris O’ Dowd, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole and M. Emmet Walsh. 100 mins
As a rule films with a biblical reference in their title should be treated with scepticism. But McDonagh’s follow up to The Guard has an unusual and unsettling force that makes it equal to being named after history’s most famous place of execution.
In many ways, Calvary is just like The Guard. It crackles with fantastic dialogue; is darkly funny and provides a dynamic central role for Brendan Gleeson. It is also though a very weighty examination of the value and purpose of faith, particularly a faith expressed through the uniform of an establishment, the Roman Catholic church, which has been tarnished by paedophile priests and a long history of corruption. It also seems to question the kind of casual nihilism and gallows humour that was at the heart of The Guard and which has replaced faith as the default modern coping mechanism.
In the opening scene an Irish parish priest, Gleeson, has his life threatened in the confessional. So the film is set up as a Who’lldoit. There are a range of suspects – though he is a good and genuine man he is resented and hated by everybody in the community. The opening half hour is riotously funny and Gleeson’s Father James is a potentially marvellous comic creation: a self-aware, straight talking but sincere man of God, with a mordant sense of irony. He wants his story to stay in the surrounds of a black comedy, but the scorn and resentments of his parishioners is such that they refuse to play along with the genre. The laughs gradually wither away to leave a very dark and serious drama.
London born McDonagh is a mighty talent and just about the only filmmaker addressing the depth and misery of Ireland’s contemporary crisis and how it is limping along after having been betrayed by all of its major institutions. He’s primarily a wordsmith but his visual sense is none too shoddy - the film gives us a bleak but beautiful vision of the Sligo landscape – and he gets the most out of his cast. His dialogue is the key though; inserting a dark deadpan cynicism between the jolly yardsticks of Irish speech, the Right sos, the good on yas. The film has a great cast but this dialogue is so strong it practically acts itself.
