Calvary

Calvary is set in the wake of the Catholic Church’s legacy of abuse. Director John Michael McDonagh uses small town characters to represent the ways in which the Church used its power to catastrophic effect, and the belief systems we tend to turn to in the absence of religious faith.

At the centre of the film is Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), a priest whose life has been threatened by a victim of clerical abuse. Lavelle’s dry wisdom resonates with hard-earned life knowledge. A widower, a father and a recovering alcoholic, he sees beauty in faith and in the struggle to find it. With the shadow of his own mortality following him, he discusses the idea of sin, and how it relates to goodness, with members of the community. These include a cynical atheist doctor (Aiden Gillen), a wealthy but emotionally impoverished land-owner (Dylan Moran) and a gay prostitute (Owen Sharpe).

A series of heightened moral discussions is punctuated by stunning shots of Sligo’s steep mountains and rugged coastlines, rendered intimidating and majestic by circling widescreen shots and Patrick Cassidy’s melancholy score. Thus McDonagh highlights the stark nature of the forces that formed our country.

Gleeson, as ever, is magnificent. Delivering McDonagh’s nuanced but unflinching observations on Ireland, it’s hard to imagine another pairing delving into this country’s psyche with such emotional intelligence. The flaws in this dense, contemplative drama are easy to spot. On occasion, its humour is a little too absurd; its symbolism too obvious; the subplots too numerous. Still, I’m grateful for those few jarring moments that momentarily broke the tension in a film that damn near broke me.

Calvary is an overwhelmingly affecting portrait of abuse, recovery – and a nation’s desperate scramble for hope.