Calvary

John Michael McDonagh follows up his amusingly profane and potent directorial début, The Guard, with a more inward, introspective film. Calvary again stars Brendan Gleason, who this time plays a good priest living in an Irish fishing village at a time when scandal and corruption have targeted the Catholic Church with suspicion, scorn, and hostility. The movie begins with a scene in a confessional, where we view only Gleason's side of the conversation. This interaction defines the film's timetable and hangs a passive mystery over the proceedings, which provide structure and suspense to the episodic narrative. McDonagh’s dialogue is meticulous--theatrical and literary rather than authentic. His characters speak in allegories, metaphors, and self-conscious analytical platitudes. But his adroit direction of the solid cast manages to make these arch, thematically loaded exchanges sound like everyday conversation.

Calvary tackles ambitious themes for such a small movie. The central character, like the picture itself, attempts to understand whether or not the church and its teachings have any relevance in modern society, and what becomes of humanity if it has lost its faith in God. These subjects are weighty for a director who, like his brother Martin, is known more for extravagant, intelligent genre material with verbose, larger than life characters. Even though this film occasionally crosses too far into the heightened comic tone of The Guard, McDonagh is up to the challenge. Much credit for the effectiveness of this picture belongs to Gleason, who grounds the film with his powerful, yet understated performance. British and Irish actors seem to have an uncanny ability (lacking in their American contemporaries) to use the expectations of their typecasting to portray characters in ways totally different from what we expect. We associate Gleason with big men who talk constantly. Here (though physically big) he plays a mild, penitent man who says little but clearly has a thousand thought in his mind. With Calvary, Gleason proves he's an even better leading man than he is a character actor. Father James is perhaps his greatest role yet.