Director: John Michael McDonagh Reviewer: Paul Sorrell 

The mainspring of the plot is laid out for us in the first few minutes of the film: a man enters the confessional of Fr James Lavelle, a priest in rural County Sligo, and tells him his terrible story of sexual abuse at the hands of a cleric. As the offender is now dead, he promises that he will meet Fr James the following Sunday on a local beach, where he will kill him. “Nobody would care if I killed a bad priest, but to kill a good priest like you would really be noticed.” From this point, Fr James assumes the role – reluctantly yet freely – of the sacrificial victim who will atone for the sins of his Church.

Fr James (Brendan Gleeson) is indeed a good priest – wise, compassionate, nonjudgmental, fully focussed on the needs of his people. However, his personal world swiftly descends into a maelstrom of suffering and evil. Everyone around him is either deeply troubled or living vicious, self-centred, empty – or simply bizarre – lives. Although the film is billed as a black comedy (as well as a whodunnit), any laughs are few and far between. Calvary is Father Ted meets Northern Exposure, with a dash of Tarentino for good measure.

As each day ticks away in what Fr James imagines to be his last week on earth, one disturbing encounter succeeds another. Calling on the local police chief to borrow a revolver, he is met by the local male prostitute, a young man reduced to a state of embittered depravity as the result of clerical abuse as a child. He visits Michael, an arrogant young businessman (Dylan Moran), who demonstrates his detachment from his wealth by urinating on a Holbein painting. Fr James’s daughter – he is a widower – is deeply disturbed by the loss of both her parents – one to an early grave, the other to the Church – and is a suicide survivor.

These are not everyday parishioners, even if the northwest of Ireland setting is beautiful and haunting: Ben Bulben looms over the action, suggesting how the Catholic Church and its sins lie heavy on the landscape. The only way I could make any sense of this disturbing but brilliant film was to see its procession of Boschian grotesques as an emanation from Fr James’s tormented mind. (Significantly, we only see the other characters when he is present.) As this good priest moves inexorably towards his personal calvary, redemption is still a long way off.

Published in Tui Motu Magazine. August 2014.