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The second feature written and directed by the prodigiously talented Irishman John Michael McDonagh opens with a quote from Saint Augustine: “Despair not, one of the thieves was spared; presume not, one of the thieves was not.” (It is no accident that this bit of wisdom is cited in “Waiting For Godot,” an obscure theatrical work by another talented Irishman name of Beckett.) Later in the movie, Fiona ( Kelly Reilly ) the daughter of County Sligo priest James Lavelle ( Brendan Gleeson )—Lavelle took the vows after his wife, Fiona’s mother, died years earlier—takes confession with her literal and spiritual father, and, obliquely addressing the troubles that informed her recent, half-hearted suicide attempt, asserts, “I belong to myself, not to anyone else.” To which Father James responds, “True. False.”

A mordant sense of duality that eventually takes on near-apocalyptic dimensions runs through this very darkly comic tale, telling a week in the life of Father James. Sunday kicks off pretty horribly. A man ostensibly offering Father James his confession explicitly describes his sexual abuse at the hands of the priest years earlier, and outline his plan for revenge: he intends to kill a “good priest” in exactly a week. He means for that good priest to be Father James, and invites him to a beach spot to meet his doom.

This disturbs James, as well it might. But he does not go to the authorities. Instead, he tends to his flock, such as it is. And a more perverse bunch would be hard to find anywhere else than in a provincial, lonely Irish remote. There’s the local butcher (Chris O’Dowd), who might well be slapping around his sexpot wife (Oria O’Rourke), who’s brazenly conducting an affair with an African immigrant auto mechanic (Isaach de Bankole). The local barkeep’s a ball of resentment, the town’s most dapper young man is completely socially inept, the police chief’s a glib sourpuss who makes no attempt to disguise the fact that he does business with a manic, Jimmy-Cagney-impersonating male prostitute. The local hospital biggie is a monstrously cynical atheist with a monstrous anecdote to explain his poor attitude. The local fat cat is swilling in his ale, and worse, at his manse after being abandoned by his wife and child. And so on. It is again no accident that the only characters who are at all kind to Father James, besides his daughter, are non-Irish ones: a very aged American ex-pat author (M. Emmett Walsh, whose presence is extremely welcome despite his looking like death warmed over, which admittedly works for the character), determined to off himself before he goes completely decrepit, and a French widow (Marie Josée Croze) who commiserates with Father James after he performs last rites on her husband.

McDonagh’s structuring is unusual: almost all the scenes are what are referred to in the theater as “two handers,” that is, exchanges between only two characters. Each scene tackles a particular variation on the movie’s theme, which is the earning of forgiveness, and whether taking what’s said to be the right action is sufficient to do so. Gleeson’s performance is magnificent; sharp, compassionate, bemused, never not intellectually active. McDonagh’s dialogue is similarly never not sharp, and only occasionally lost to an actor’s Irish accent. As the picture progresses, Father James’ parishioners morph from a group of perverse individuals to one of intransigently spiteful lunatics. McDonagh takes considerable risks, in this day and age, crafting what’s essentially an absurdist allegory. By the film’s finale, this viewer felt that one or two of the risks didn’t entirely pay off, but my admiration for McDonagh’s brass remained intact. This is the kind of movie that galvanizes and discomfits while it’s on screen, and is terrific fodder for conversation long after its credits roll. Even if you are neither Catholic nor Irish, this “Calvary” will in no way be a useless sacrifice of your moviegoing time.

Glenn Kenny

Glenn Kenny was the chief film critic of Premiere magazine for almost half of its existence. He has written for a host of other publications and resides in Brooklyn. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Calvary (2014)

Rated R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use

100 minutes

Brendan Gleeson as Father James Lavelle

Chris O'Dowd as Jack Brennan

Kelly Reilly as Fiona Lavelle

Aidan Gillen as Dr. Frank Harte

Dylan Moran as Michael Fitzgerald

Isaach de Bankolé as Simon

M. Emmet Walsh as The Writer

Marie-Josée Croze as Teresa

Domhnall Gleeson as Freddie Joyce

John Michael McDonagh

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Rent Calvary on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Led by a brilliant performance from Brendan Gleeson, Calvary tackles weighty issues with humor, intelligence, and sensitivity.

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Calvary review – Agony in the confessional

John Michael McDonagh could yet be the Anthony Mann or the Fred Zinnemann of modern Irish cinema. He is at home in Ireland's Wild West, and makes the Knocknarea mountain of County Sligo look like northern Europe's answer to Monument Valley . His lawman here is Brendan Gleeson, playing Father James Lavelle, an embattled priest facing a high-noon confrontation with one of his flock. Gleeson is craggy, troubled, burdened, drolly resentful … part Gary Cooper , part Pat O'Brien, part Clement Freud.

Calvary is a different proposition from his black comedy The Guard, from 2011, in which Gleeson played a highly unconventional cop. It's bleaker and dourer – and less anti-clerical than you might expect. There are fewer laugh lines and zingers. Occasionally it looks as if it is straining for maturity. The film begins with a character being reproved for irony, and ends with that same character reproving someone else for cynicism. It's as if McDonagh is having an angry argument with himself about tone, attitude and about the subject matter to which these things are to be applied: modern, post-Catholic Ireland . Calvary makes an interesting companion piece to Stephen Frears's Philomena. It presents us with a satirical image of a country which is cracked and fractured into pieces, a crazy-paving that isn't fitting together. Without the powerfully charismatic Gleeson, I suspect, the film itself wouldn't fit together.

Father James is not a stereotypical priest who entered the seminary at 18: he found his vocation in middle age, having been married, and now with a grownup daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), who is suffering from depression. James himself is a widower and a recovering alcoholic, and it could be that religion is a way of "white-knuckling" his way past his problems, and past Fiona's, too.

James's life reaches a crisis in the confession box. An unseen voice tells him about the horrific child abuse the speaker suffered and how he now intends to get closure by killing James in seven days' time, despite or because of the fact that James is a genuinely good priest. As this anonymous figure has not asked for absolution, James is not bound to silence – unlike, say, Montgomery Clift in Hitchcock's I Confess (1953) – but having recognised the voice, James feels challenged to resolve this man's agony without naming him to the authorities or the audience. (There is an unstressed "whodunnit" quality to the story, for those who want to pursue it.) Yet as the days pass, James feels the situation growing into something grimly and pointlessly sacrificial: he could be an anti-Thomas-Becket , a non-saint whose death will have no meaning for a secular society. And is he, in fact, as innocent as all that?

The priest is regarded locally with mixed feelings: a Jonsonian gallery of scorn. Pub landlord Brendan (Pat Shortt) nurtures icy hostility. The atheist hospital doctor Frank Harte, played with a semi-permanent, psychopathic grin by Aiden Gillen, baits James daily, while Dylan Moran plays Fitzgerald, a self-hating retired banker grown rich on Ireland's ruinous finance bubble, who taunts James with offers of a donation. The priest must, moreover, occasionally visit an imprisoned serial killer (played by Gleeson's son Domhnall Gleeson ) but epiphanies and redemptive insights are thin on the ground. The pastoral problem he must tackle, apart from his own impending murder, is the black eye being sported by Veronica (Orla O'Rourke): is she being assaulted by her husband, Jack (Chris O'Dowd) or her boyfriend, Simon (Isaach De Bankolé), an incomer from the Ivory Coast? James's attempts to address this issue have a wretched outcome: he is accused of arrogance, racism and irrelevance. Is there a congregation for James to address, a community of souls that makes sense of his position as priest? It doesn't look like it.

The title can only be read ironically: Father James doesn't endure a transformative agony. He is not clarified, ethically or spiritually, by the experience, and feels more immediate emotion for his dog than for the fate of those innumerable victims of child abuse, though there is a kind of heroism, short of martyrdom, in actually admitting it.

Opinions will differ on how McDonagh concludes this strange ordeal. It could be that the more pessimistic register he attempts is not as successful as the more obviously comic voice he found in The Guard, and some might be uneasy at the way his priest character, however flawed, appears to have a monopoly in moral self-questioning. But I found myself carried along by this film. There is an exhilaration in its alienation and anger.

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Film Review: ‘Calvary’

Brendan Gleeson gives a performance of monumental soul in John Michael McDonagh's masterful follow-up to 'The Guard.'

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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Writer-director John Michael McDonagh and actor Brendan Gleeson made a big international splash with 2011’s “The Guard,” a terrifically entertaining action-comedy that offered little indication of the depths of humor, compassion, despair and grace they would achieve in their masterful follow-up, “ Calvary .” Grounded by a performance of monumental soul from Gleeson as a tough-minded Irish priest marked for death by one of his parishioners, the film offers a mordantly funny survey of small-town iniquity that morphs, almost imperceptibly, into a deeply felt lament for a fallen world. A completely sincere work about the persistence of faith and the Catholic Church’s soul-shattering legacy of abuse, this literate, beautifully crafted picture should translate near-certain critical plaudits into a distinguished arthouse reception worldwide.

Given the B.O. receipts and Oscar nominations racked up by Stephen Frears’ anti-clerical dramedy “Philomena,” it will be intriguing to see how McDonagh’s less ingratiating but vastly more accomplished picture plays with audiences in Ireland and beyond. The director has described his second feature as “basically Bresson’s ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ with a few gags thrown in,” a description that for all its absurdity nails the essence of this caustic yet contemplative film: Leisurely paced, unapologetically talky and overtly concerned with matters of spiritual import, “Calvary” may not achieve the record-breaking success of “The Guard” (still the most successful Irish indie of all time). But for sustained maturity and tonal mastery, it upstages not only McDonagh’s debut but also his brother Martin’s comic thrillers “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths,” all while retaining the pungent fatalism and bleak humor that run so indelibly through both filmmakers’ work.

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“I first tasted semen when I was 7 years old,” an unseen man tells an unnamed priest (Gleeson) in the dark shadows of the confessional. He goes on to explain that he was repeatedly raped by a priest over the course of five years, a crime for which he will exact retribution in the most irrational and unexpected way imaginable. “There’s no point in killing a bad priest,” he says. “I’m going to kill you because you’re innocent.” He sets their fateful next appointment for the next Sunday, exactly one week later, leaving our anxious hero of the cloth to determine which member of his flock is planning to murder him.

What follows is an existential detective story of sorts, or perhaps an Agatha Christie whodunit by way of Hitchcock’s “I Confess,” in which the priest goes about his coastal village, tending to his flock while a seven-day clock ticks quietly away in the background. What he finds is a community steeped in anger, disappointment and, despite their continued presence at mass, a near-total indifference to the notion that faith, repentance and good works have any real meaning.

There’s a butcher (Chris O’Dowd) who is initially suspected of beating his town-slut wife (Orla O’Rourke), until he explains that she probably sustained her injuries at the hands of her Ivorian-immigrant lover (Isaach De Bankole). There’s also a vaguely sinister police inspector (Gary Lydon, reprising his role from “The Guard”) whom the priest interrupts mid-tryst with a saucy male prostitute (Owen Sharpe); a doctor (Aidan Gillen) who makes no secret of his violently atheist views; an extravagantly wealthy man (Dylan Moran) whose riches have failed to bring him any lasting happiness; a sex-starved young man (Killian Scott) considering joining the army in order to vent his violent impulses; and an aging American writer (M. Emmet Walsh) determined to end life on his own terms.

All these villagers are introduced, one after another, in a series of sharply written, compellingly acted and increasingly pointed moral discussions, during which the priest will offer his counsel while scanning for clues as to who the would-be killer might be. But the richest insights here are those we glean into the character of the grizzled clergyman himself, a widower and a father, a dog lover, a recovering alcoholic, and an unusually pragmatic, erudite soul (“You’re too sharp for this parish,” one villager notes) whose every nugget of hard-headed wisdom resonates with bitter life knowledge.

It’s a role that one cannot imagine in the hands of anyone other than Gleeson, who has never seemed less capable of hitting a false or inauthentic note. Despite the actor’s deliberately constricted range here, moments of gruffness, exasperation, resignation and quietly choked-back emotion all manage to register, fleetingly yet indelibly, in the those magnificently weathered features. This virtuous protagonist couldn’t be more different on paper from the surly, sozzled cop he played in “The Guard,” yet Gleeson roots both characters in the same bone-deep integrity, and the same fearless determination to follow their sense of duty to the unforeseeable end.

It’s not clear at exactly what point the film has made its shift from foul-mouthed village comedy to quietly devastating passion play; certainly the transition feels complete by the time the priest pays a visit to an imprisoned rapist-murderer-cannibal (played, in a particularly perverse casting choice, by Gleeson’s son Domhnall). Amid all the accumulated waste and despair, two scenes stand out for their extraordinary tenderness: a beachside reckoning between the priest and his troubled daughter (a superb Kelly Reilly), and a thoughtful conversation with a woman (Marie-Josee Croze) who has lost her husband but not her faith. Hope, it seems, has not been completely extinguished. And yet, as it follows the priest on the lonely walk to his own personal Golgotha (the seven days of his journey conjuring any number of biblical allusions), “Calvary” makes clear, with utter conviction, that the Church’s incalculable abuses have exacted and will continue to exact a terrible human price.

Putting aside the stylistic bravura of “The Guard,” McDonagh and his collaborators have delivered a technically immaculate work that feels appropriately austere by comparison. D.p. Larry Smith’s widescreen compositions are framed with unfussy precision; as stunning as the rugged landscapes are to behold, particularly the shots of waves breaking against cliffs (the production shot on the east and west coasts), the lighting and color balancing of the interior shots are no less exquisite. Patrick Cassidy’s melancholy score is summoned at just the right moments.

For the record, the press notes mention that “The Guard” and “Calvary” are the first two installments of a trilogy that will conclude with a film titled “The Lame Shall Enter First.”

Reviewed at Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 19, 2014. (Also in Berlin Film Festival — Panorama.) Running time: 100 MIN.

Production: (U.K.-Ireland) A Bord Scannan na hEireann/the Irish Film Board and BFI presentation in association with Lipsync Prods. of a Reprisal Films and Octagon Films production. (International sales: Protagonist Pictures, London.) Produced by Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez Marengo, James Flynn. Executive producers, Robert Walak, Ronan Flynn. Co-producers, Elizabeth Eves, Aaron Farrell.
Crew: Directed, written by John Michael McDonagh. Camera (color, widescreen), Larry Smith; editor, Chris Gill; music, Patrick Cassidy; music supervisor, Liz Gallacher; production designer, Mark Geraghty; art director, Fiona Daly; costume designer, Eimer Ni Mhaoldomhnaigh; sound, Robert Flanagan; supervising sound editor, Ian Wilson; re-recording mixer, Paul Cotterell; special effects coordinator, Kevin Byrne; visual effects supervisor, Sheila Wickens; visual effects producer, Lucy Tanner; stunt coordinator, Joe Condren; line producer, Patrick O'Donoghue; assistant director, Peter Agnew; casting, Jina Jay.
With: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O'Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankole, M. Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josee Croze, Domnhall Gleeson, David Wilmot, Pat Shortt, Gary Lydon, Killian Scott, Orla O'Rourke, Owen Sharpe, David McSavage, Michaeal Og Lane, Mark O'Halloran, Declan Conlon, Anabel Sweeney.

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CALVARY Is A Risky But Successful Discussion Of Moral Corruption

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Calvary chronicles a week in the life of Irish Catholic Priest, Father James Lavelle ( Brendan Gleeson ). When we meet him, Father Lavelle hears a haunting confession: the man was abused by a priest in his youth. He considered revenge, but the man is long gone. Instead, he has decided that to make a statement, he will kill Lavelle, whom he considers a good man, on the next Sunday. This opening scene is impressive: we see only Gleeson ‘s face while he hears the confession, his face showing, consecutively, patience, sympathy and horror. While he doesn’t seem to take the threat in stride, he does remain calm and composed.

The next day, on Monday, his daughter, played by Kelly Reilly , comes into town by train. He picks her up and finds out she tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. They go to a pub, where several jabs about her “making the classic mistake”(cutting laterally instead of vertically) are made by the patrons in the pub. The humor is cruel and sometimes wince-inducing, we soon find out that Calvary is a dark comedy is not an overstatement. Yet, the inhabitants of the Irish town take this type of humor in stride.

During this week, Father Lavelle makes house visits to and talks with many of the villagers: he tries to help a couple that is having marital issues (the woman is sleeping with the mechanic); a sickly old man, living solitarily in a small cottage only accessible by boat, who is waiting for his death; a young woman whose husband passed away while they were on vacation; a man who is greedy and materialistic and cares nothing for people; a young man who wants to join the army purely because he wants to kill.

Moral Terror in an Arrestingly Beautiful Environment

Father Lavelle appears to be a truly good man, with a good heart – Brendan Gleeson plays him convincingly and with integrity. He’s like a giant cuddly teddy bear, and he just wants the world to be a better place. Nevertheless, he is disillusioned, disappointed by the people around him. His composure starts to crack when on the third day, his church is lit on fire.

Over and over, Lavelle is confronted with the corrupted moral choices the people around him make. Despite the fact that he is truly a good man, a pious, loyal priest, he too is sinful – he has a penchant for alcohol abuse. Although he quit drinking when he became a priest, when the stress becomes too much for him to bear, he turns to the glass once more.

A particularly striking scene is when he is strolling through the beautiful landscape of Ireland. The shots of the environment are breathtaking – it has a purity and serenity, to Lavelle’s dismay, none of the characters of Calvary have (and you can see why he takes solace in these strolls), and it serves as an excellent contrast to the faulty moral compass of the people in this film. When he makes his way back to the town, he meets a young girl. They walk down the path together and chat about how she’s there on vacation with her family, until her father hurriedly pulls up with his car, and pushes the girl into his car, sneering at Lavelle that he’s a pervert.

While the movie presents the moral dilemmas and the sinful choices people make over and over, the domineering sin this movie contemplates is that of abuse of children by the Catholic Church. It’s a risky discussion, and the contrast of putting a good priest in the middle of it makes it eerie. Calvary is impressively nuanced in the way that it criticizes the actions of the Catholic priests, as well asthe way the public has handled this issue. In general, it shows how people have become jaded and mistrusting of others. Lavelle, a man who is genuinely good despite his human flaws, is a victim of the mistrust of others.

Gallows Humor and Unusual Sets

When Calvary was announced and I saw it was tagged as a comedy, I was disappointed. I thought this topic was not at all suitable for light humor. Thankfully, while Calvary is very funny at times, it definitely can’t be said it’s light. The humor is cutting, dark and witty. The sets are unusual and frequently arresting, the prime example being the set where Lavelle confronts Jack Brennan ( Chris O’Dowd ) , whose wife is cheating on him and is suspected of hitting her. Brennan works in a butcher shop and they discuss the issue in front of butchered meat (see above).

The screenplay, written John Michael McDonagh , is unique in every way. McDonagh directed the film, too, and you can sense that he is intimately familiar with his script. Both screenplay and direction are subtle, smart and exquisite. Larry Smith was the appointed cinematographer for Calvary , who was also cinematographer for Nicolas Winding Refn ‘s Only God Forgives , which was a lot less subtle but a gorgeous watch. If you’ve seen Only God Forgives , you won’t be surprised when I say the movie was beautifully shot.

Calvary has gone relatively unnoticed, it seems, but it’s an absolute must-see. The performances are on-point, particularly that of Brendan Gleeson , who is convincing and soulful. The direction and script are excellent, as is the cinematography. It’s a beautiful piece of art, a movie that makes you think – not just on moral decisions of people in general, but your own, too (I’m sure there’s a character for everyone that they can recognize themselves and their own sins in), as well as what happened to countless innocent children, the value of a good person is, and what happens when such a good person is targeted just because he’s good.

In fact, Calvary so deep and contemplative that I put off writing this review for a while so I could mull over it for a while – the movie is a lot to take in. However, I can’t wait to see it again when the BluRay is released. So far, Calvary has won four awards. It won the “Panorama” award at the Berlin Film Festival (for movies that discuss controversial topics), and it won three Irish Film and Television awards: it won Best Film and Best Screenplay for John Michael McDonagh , and Brendan Gleeson won Best Lead Actor. All very well deserved.

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Review: ‘Calvary’ takes a funny-serious look at life and death

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It takes a moment. As “Calvary” opens, a small-town Irish priest sits to hear a confession. A few beats have likely come and gone before a viewer realizes that the image isn’t cutting away, that the audience is being asked to watch a man listen. It’s unusual but also unexpectedly riveting.

Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, “Calvary” reveals itself over and over to be a movie of such surprises, a serious-minded, lightly comedic rumination on life, death, faith and community. In its steady assemblage of details over an incidental, episodic structure it accrues a building sense of moral gravity.

That the priest is played by an actor with the natural, compelling presence of Brendan Gleeson certainly helps. That what the priest hears from an unseen victim of priestly sexual abuse is a threat to kill him in one week’s time ups the ante as well, alongside the would-be villain’s rationale that killing a good, innocent priest like Gleeson’s Father James will pack more of a wallop than killing an abuser. The film deftly avoids becoming some kind of whodunit in reverse, as McDonagh shows little particular interest in who might actually be the would-be killer. Rather, the inevitably of what’s coming gives a sense of clarity and purpose to everything the good father does in the time he has left.

McDonagh’s previous film, “The Guard,” which starred Gleeson alongside Don Cheadle, was something of a dark comedy, fish-out-of-water police procedural. There, variances in tone often came across as uncertainty, while in “Calvary” the story darts and dives with more assuredness, moving from serious to silly from scene to scene in what might be described as purposeful meandering.

Often dressed in an anachronistic cassock and with a rather astonishing sweep of leonine hair, Gleeson cuts an imposing and authoritative figure, like something from a rough-edged spaghetti western dropped on the dramatic west coast of Ireland.The role provides a fantastic showcase for the actor, as he captures the inner conflict and outward placidity of the character. Written with him in mind, it is hard to imagine anyone else in the part.

McDonagh often pulls tension from the postcard imagery of the settings, such as when Father James and his daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly), born before he joined the priesthood, have an intense, emotional conversation while walking along grand, picturesque cliffs. The film was shot by Larry Smith, cameraman on Stanley Kubrick’s dreamlike “Eyes Wide Shut” and more recently the garish, hypnotic “Only God Forgives,” and so the images have a dynamic quality to match the forceful storytelling.

The town has an assorted cast of characters — small-town eccentrics of various stripes — many of whom become possible suspects, played by actors including Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankolé, Orla O’Rourke and the seemingly immortal American character actor M. Emmet Walsh. Perhaps to keep viewers off-balance, McDonagh continues throwing in new characters fairly late in the story, such as Gleeson’s real-life son Domhnall Gleeson in a single scene as an imprisoned serial killer. Chris O’Dowd, as the local butcher and cuckold, syncs well with McDonagh’s sensibility, moving from funny ha-ha to funny odd to outright unnerving.

McDonagh is the older brother of playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh, writer-director of the dark thriller “In Bruges” and the inside-out killer comedy “Seven Psychopaths.” The two seem to share a creative DNA in the intense self-awareness of their storytelling — Gleeson at one point expressly refers to a “third-act revelation” — but “Calvary” has a humane compassion that the films of Martin McDonagh keep more buried.

As the end credits roll on “Calvary” there is a series of images of the spaces from the film devoid of people — empty tables and open tableaux. It gives the life-or-death decisions of the movie a whole new framing, the world existing on after the travails of the story.

The film is then not so much a meditation but a reverie, a swirl of emotions and ideas, managing to be both calmly reflective and skittishly anxious at the same time. “Calvary” is a serious comedy, a funny drama, a ruminative film about life and a lively film about death. From the jolting simplicity of the opening scene right through those final shots, “Calvary” is never quite the film you expect it to be. It sneaks up on you.

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MPAA rating: R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use

Running time: 1 hour, 44 minutes

Playing: At ArcLight Hollywood and the Landmark

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‘Calvary’ movie review: Finding fear and loathing in the flock

When Father James, the shambling, deeply humane protagonist of " Calvary ," returns to his monklike living quarters after performing Mass or making parish visits, he's greeted by his only companion, a soulfully loyal dog, into whose fur the priest passionately buries his face, as if savoring the last vestige of sensual pleasure available to him.

In many ways Brendan Gleeson, who plays Father James in this atmospheric, theologically minded thriller, resembles that gorgeous animal: shaggy and charismatic, he earns immediate buy-in from the audience, no matter what the movie happens to be, from the criminally underseen " Edge of Tomorrow " earlier this summer to " The Guard ," the darkly uproarious buddy film that he thoroughly dominated alongside Don Cheadle in 2011.

“Calvary” is something of a follow-up to that film, having also been written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. Like the previous effort, this small-canvas portrait — of a sin-ridden community in County Sligo — possesses biting wit, idiosyncratic characters and a steadfast suspicion of reassuring sentiment, whether in the form of religious faith or random acts of human kindness. Father James is a modest, deeply humane man of the cloth: gruff, taciturn, utterly innocent of the cruelty, corruption and overweening pietism for which the Catholic church has been criticized in recent years. He’s one of the good guys, a fact that cannot go unpunished in the course of “Calvary’s” carefully machined plot or, apparently, McDonagh’s own unforgiving imagination.

As “Calvary” opens, Father James is hearing the confession of one of his village’s inhabitants; when the young man begins with a recollection of being molested as a boy, the priest wryly retorts, “That’s certainly a startling opening line.” Even more unsettling: The confession ends with Father James being told that he’ll be killed one week from that Sunday — precisely because he’s guilt-free — a piece of news he receives with characteristic deadpan impassivity.

After deciding that going to the police would break the confidence of confession, Father James goes about his business, visiting the motley members of his parish in the hopes of uncovering the identity of his would-be assassin and turning his heart. “Calvary” isn’t a whodunit, as McDonagh himself has said, it’s a who’s-gonna-do-it.

With each encounter, the citizens of Father James’s parish reveal themselves to be an exceptionally angry, cynical and dismissive bunch, from the explosively hostile butcher (Chris O’Dowd) and his philandering wife (Orla O’Rourke) to a supercilious millionaire (Dylan Moran), the town’s resident Lothario (Isaach De Bankolé) and an arrogant physician (Aidan Gillen). Nearly every commandment has been broken by his flock, including unspeakable crimes that Moses himself couldn’t have foreseen, let alone delivered.

Father James’s mood lightens a bit with the arrival of his daughter, played with damaged loveliness by Kelly Reilly. But she, too, inhabits a dark side that fits right into “Calvary’s” universe, a world of quiet despair tempered by Irish gallows humor (and, it must be said, given earthy appeal by a soundtrack featuring the great Jackson C. Frank and Fred Neil, among others).

As pungent as McDonagh’s writing is, it may be his too-easy pessimism that makes “Calvary” engrossing and thought-provoking, but not great. As he did with “The Guard,” the filmmaker has fashioned a marvelous showcase for Gleeson at his most restrained and commandingly sympathetic, but the story ultimately feels too overdetermined, too manipulatively and schematically designed, to be as profound as the filmmaker surely intended. Even as portrayed by a terrific ensemble of actors, the townspeople wind up being caricatures of eccentricity — perhaps not as goofily appealing as in most small-Irish-town comedies but just as regrettably one-note in their waspish venality. (There are one or two respites by way of characters played by Marie-Josée Croze and M. Emmet Walsh.)

As forthright as “Calvary” is in addressing the church’s recent troubled history and the far more universal subjects of hypocrisy and spiritual malaise, it too often feels conveniently contrived to fit McDonagh’s agenda rather than organically lived and experienced. That weakness extends to the film’s dispiriting climax, in which the irony and fatalism that have driven “Calvary” forward reach an end point that, while doubtlessly dramatic, doesn’t jibe with the Father James we’ve come to know and love. While he may entertain his share of doubts, that Father James is a man of prayer rather than plot twists.

R. At area theaters. Contains sexual references, profanity, brief strong violence and some drug use. 104 minutes.

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Movie Review: Calvary (2014)

Howard Schumann
Movie Reviews
3 responses
--> August 11, 2014

Calvary (2014) by The Critical Movie Critics

A troubled priest.

In a world grown cynical, decency stands out, but often only to be mocked and abused. In Georges Bernanos’ novel The Diary of a Country Priest , a sickly, humble, and idealistic young priest pays the ultimate price for the spiritual lethargy of his parish, while Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) in John Michael McDonagh’s brilliant Calvary is vulnerable to the malicious cynicism of his community. Unlike the Curé d’Ambricourt, however, Father James is a physically strong and robust man with a tough skin born of adversity, but is betrayed by those who have lost faith, not only in the secular and religious institutions of man, but in themselves and humanity.

One of the more thoughtful and intelligent films of the year, Calvary is billed as a comedy/drama, but the drama is bleak and the comedy is of the mean-spirited variety. Set in County Sligo in Ireland, the remote village is a microcosm of a world in which victimization has replaced responsibility. Though Father James is a good man, McDonagh makes it clear that the church’s sorry record of ignoring sexual abuse among its clergy will and should exact a heavy price. As the film opens, the burly priest sits alone in his confessional box listening to the voice of an obviously disturbed man telling him how he was sexually abused by a priest for five years beginning at the age of seven.

The deeply resentful man tells the priest that he plans to murder him the following Sunday at a specific time and place to atone for his mistreatment. Since the man who molested him is dead, he reasons that killing an innocent priest will make an impactful statement. Father James recognizes the voice and talks to the Bishop (David McSavage) about it, but does not contact the police, even when there is a violent attack on the church property. Although he faces an uncertain future, like the Curé in Bernanos’ novel, he regularly visits the homes of his parishioners in the village, counseling a local butcher (Chris O’Dowd) who was thought to have abused his wife (Orla O’Rourke), until it is discovered that her part-time lover (Isaach De Bankolé) was responsible.

He also talks with a suicidal writer (M. Emmet Walsh) about life and death, a young man (Domhnall Gleeson) in prison for murder and cannibalism, and a wealthy financier (Dylan Moran) who no longer cares about anything and shows that by urinating on an expensive painting. The string of misfits doesn’t end there. The father visits a staunchly atheistic doctor (Aidan Gillen) who quips that a group of teenagers who were killed in a car accident and a tourist from France are in the morgue “where they belong,” a police inspector (Gary Lydon) whose sexual tastes lean towards boy prostitutes such as his “regular” (Owen Sharpe), and an unhappy young man (Killian Scott) who wants to express his violent tendencies by joining the army.

As Father James, Brendan Gleeson delivers a powerfully authentic performance that captures the nuance of the character in all his complexities, especially apparent in a scene of exquisite gentleness with a woman (Marie-Josée Croze) who has just lost her husband but maintains her faith, and with a conversation with Fiona, his troubled daughter (a terrific Kelly Reilly) as they stroll along the beach. At one point, he says to his daughter that we talk about sin much too often and not enough about virtue. When his daughter asks what his favorite virtue is, he says that it is “forgiveness.” Like Jesus, Father James may ask for forgiveness for others, saying that they know not what they do. The only problem is that they know not what they do once too often and those that attempt to tell them are crucified.

Tagged: church , murder , priest

I am a retired father of two living with my wife in Vancouver, B.C. who has had a lifelong interest in the arts.

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'Movie Review: Calvary (2014)' have 3 comments

August 11, 2014 @ 4:01 am Jiro

Brendan Gleeson doesn’t get enough credit for being an actor of exceptional talent.

August 11, 2014 @ 10:59 am Isaac

I loved The Guard so I’m glad to see the McDonagh-Gleeson partnership wasn’t a one hit wonder.

August 11, 2014 @ 7:47 pm Barcalounger

I didn’t find anything darkly funny about it. Rather it’s deeply depressing.

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By Anthony Lane

Brendan Gleeson plays a troubled Irish priest in John Michael McDonaghs movie.

Thank God for Brendan Gleeson. Long before the invention of CinemaScope, movies found space for big men—not the beanpoles or the beefcakes but the frame-fillers, ursine and glowering. Gleeson is not the last of the breed (Brian Dennehy is still at work), but, with James Gandolfini and Charles Durning passed away, he is the most unignorable; any scene, whatever its mood, feels solidly earthed by his presence. Seldom does he use his bulk as Broderick Crawford, say, once did, to bully those in the vicinity. Instead, there is a diffidence, or a need to retire into the burrow of his own thoughts, that goes beyond grumpiness and deepens Gleeson’s appeal. You cannot imagine him being taken aback by the sins of the world, even when they move him to pity or scorn. How fitting, then, that his new film, “Calvary,” should see him cast as a priest.

Gleeson plays Father James, who tends the souls of a rural parish in County Sligo, on the northwest shoulder of Ireland. As aerial shots make clear, the countryside is fierce and green, with the Atlantic breaking the teeth of the coast, and a huge stone mass, like a giant’s vaulting horse, overhanging the land. That is Ben Bulben, enshrined by Yeats in verse, and it dwarfs all those dwelling below, save Father James, who strides around in his black soutane, with a beard of russet and gray. Piece by piece, the present reveals the past: Father James used to be a drinker, and he could be yet again, given the provocation and the chance. He was married, too, before being widowed and then ordained; he has a daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), who comes to visit from London, with bandages on her wrists. You start to realize what burdens our hero has to bear. How does he summon the strength to lighten the woes of others?

All this is foreshadowed in the first—and best—scene of the movie. We see nothing more than the expression on Father James’s face, but it’s like an open wound. He sits in a confessional and hears the complaint of an unidentified man, who explains that he was abused by Catholic clergy from an early age, that the damage is irreparable, and that he has therefore decided on vengeance, of a very particular kind. By way of a public statement, he will murder a priest: not a bad priest—that would be too easy, and would solve nothing—but a good one. To be specific, he will murder Father James, in a week’s time, on Sunday, at the beach. “I’m going to kill you because you’ve done nothing wrong,” he says.

What a great setup. It plunges us, without ado, into the guts of a moral crisis, but it also has a satisfying smack of the whodunit or, rather, a who-will-do-it. Think of Agatha Christie’s “A Murder Is Announced” being handed to Dostoyevsky for a rewrite. Moreover, the sequence tells us quite a bit about Father James, who seems far more distressed by the recitation of the man’s sufferings than by news of his own impending doom—the true Christian response, which is even rarer in cinema than it is in ordinary life. If the film had ended there, leaving us poised on that existential brink, I would have been content. As it is, the writer and director, John Michael McDonagh, must see the rest of the story through.

It is divided into seven days, and parcelled out among a group of locals, who may or may not be involved with the crime to come. We get a writer, a butcher, a wealthy wastrel, an African car mechanic, a God-mocking doctor, a flirt who wears dark glasses to hide her bruises, and a detective with an irritating boyfriend, who insists on speaking in a bad Bronx accent. “He’s a character, eh?” the detective remarks of his beau, and that’s the trouble. All these folk feel like “characters,” worked up and tricked out with defining traits, as opposed to plausible people. More often than not, the priest’s encounters with them are played for awkward laughs—a real lurch of tone, after the opening scene, the intensity of which soon ebbs away.

Maybe that is deliberate; maybe McDonagh intended a composite portrait of a place from which the sea of faith has, within a generation (and, some would say, with good cause), begun its long retreat. The owner of the village pub, talking to Father James, refers to “your kind,” as if religion were the mark of an alien race. What stays with you from “Calvary” is not its dramatic pull but its solitude; look at Father James entering his bare bedroom, with its crucifix on the wall, and ruffling the white-golden fur of Bruno, his retriever and best friend. “Even the wisest man grows tense / With some sort of violence,” Yeats wrote, in “Under Ben Bulben,” and that includes the man of God. At one point, Father James gets hold of a pistol, as if planning a shootout, only to hurl it unused into the waves. The tension of “Calvary” is fitful at best, and much of the movie trips into silliness, but in Brendan Gleeson—in his proud bearing and his lamenting gaze—we see the plight of the lonely believer in a world beyond belief.

Another man commands the scene in “A Master Builder.” He is more daunting than Father James, yet less obviously suited to the task. For one thing, he is half the size. His name is Halvard Solness (Wallace Shawn), and he is an architect, with a special interest in making sure that nobody else builds anything at all. What pricks and spurs him on, it seems, is a vampirism of the spirit, and those from whom the lifeblood has been sucked include his wife, Aline (Julie Hagerty), his crumbling old friend Brovik (André Gregory), and Brovik’s son, Ragnar (Jeff Biehl), who has designs on being an architect himself. Good luck with that. More important, Ragnar is betrothed to Kaya (Emily Cass McDonnell); but she, too, is in thrall to Solness, who employs her as a bookkeeper, and reduces her to tremors with the merest touch.

For lovers of “Manhattan,” memories will stir of Jeremiah, the sexual conquistador played by Shawn, who appeared for less than ninety seconds and rendered the “little homunculus” immortal. In the case of Solness, however, such powers are no joke, and the crux of the drama relies on our believing in them—something of a problem, given the crinkled smile that plays at the corner of Shawn’s mouth and hints at deep reserves of rueful irony, as of a man betrayed. Likewise, the anxious twang in his voice chimes oddly with the personage of Solness, who should be at least half übermensch. Consider the worshipful eyes—blue, wide, and unblinking—of Hilde Wangel (Lisa Joyce), who met the Master Builder ten years ago, when she was only twelve. He forced himself upon her that day, and now she bursts into his home, clad in white shorts and chunky boots, craving not revenge but further enslavement, plus the “kingdom” that he promised her back then. Strange people.

If you are wondering what that kingdom entails, and whether Hilde makes any sense at all, or how Freudian your reaction should be to the towers that Solness is said to have constructed and even climbed, you are not alone. The film is based on Ibsen’s “The Master Builder,” which, since its première, in 1893, has left audiences flailing in confusion and alarm, and producers riven: should they strain for naturalism or surrender to a rich symbolic dream? This version was adapted by Shawn, and refined onstage over fourteen years by Gregory—their third collaboration, after “My Dinner with André” (1981) and “Vanya on 42nd Street” (1994). The director is Jonathan Demme, who continues in the darting, fidgety style that he brought to “Rachel Getting Married” (2008). Such relentless probing should suit the inquisitions to which Ibsen subjects his creatures, and yet, for some regrettable reason, the movie doesn’t really work.

One clue lies with James Joyce, a fervid Ibsenite, who noted, in an essay written at the age of eighteen, that the later plays, like this one, had “a tendency to get out of closed rooms”—quite a relief, after the cagelike chambers of “A Doll’s House” and “Ghosts.” But Demme and Shawn refuse this opportunity for fresh air; indeed, they hunker down, initially confining Solness to a sickbed, with nurses in attendance, and planting a strong suggestion that the whole episode with Hilde may have bloomed in his rotting mind. The camera, close enough to sniff the actors’ breath, conspires in this hothouse effect; after Solness declares his dread that “the younger generation will just show up one day and knock on the door,” there is such a knock, Hilde appears, and we suddenly zoom in tight on his dumbstruck face. “A Master Builder” is a bold endeavor, thriftily made, and there is muscle and volume in the performances; but had Demme hung back, and kept things cooler and quieter, the mastery of what Ibsen built, and the agon of his extraordinary hero, would have cast a more looming shadow. ♦

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Calvary - movie review.

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Writer/director John Michael McDonagh returns with a vengeance in Calvary , a dark comedy that expertly juggles the sacred with the profane. The film takes its name from the hill where Jesus was crucified and, yes, it deals with sacrifice as one priest knowingly faces life with exactly one week left in it. You will be and should be on guard as you settle into the mystery of exactly which parishioner will kill the priest who watches over his flock along the west coast of Ireland.

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) wasn’t always a priest. He was married. He had a daughter. He struggled with everything but – after the sudden death of his wife – retreated to the ocean for a life of solace and peace as he studied the gospel and became one of its spokesmen. Unfortunately, he’s been selected as a sacrifice by one of his parishioners, speaking from the dark of a confessional box, who gives him exactly one week to put “his house in order” before meeting his destiny on the beach with a bullet to the head.

And that’s only the beginning of the movie.

What follows is a journey through light and darkness as Father James meets with Father Timothy Leary (David Wilmot) and the rest of his flock, going about his daily business as the next Sunday tick, tick, ticks ever so closer. He believes he knows exactly who has threatened him but doesn’t know what to do about it. He can’t exactly go to the police about it. His agony isn’t expressed as he visits his flock, giving them comfort as best he can.

As viewers, we have no clue which one of the problem church members it is. There’s the local butcher (Chris O'Dowd), the pompous squire (Dylan Moran), he sinister publican (Pat Shortt) and the naughty doctor (Aidan Gillen). There’s also his troubled daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), who adds the only support to him as he walks straight into his own death. Is it intentional? Is it suicide? McDonagh juggles all the characters and the suspense in such a fashion that the dark humor of Calvary damn near becomes a potboiler as the confrontation on the sandy shore looms.

We make our own messes. McDonagh reminds us of this as each of Father James’ efforts to rectify a situation comes back to haunt him in some fashion. Death stalks him almost nightly. Whether comforting an aging writer (M. Emmet Walsh) or talking a socially awkward young man (Killian Scott) out of joining the Army, there is little reprieve for him and certainly little emphasis on his virtues. Forgiveness is the only answer. You will meet a lot of miserable characters – from bored house wives coking up in the restrooms not bothered enough to shut the door to atheists who attend church on Sunday out of self-loathing – and certainly, much of Calvary will seem like Hell on earth. Still the town’s sign reads Easkey.

Gleeson is a mighty powerhouse throughout Calvary . He controls the words of McDonagh’s script like a wizard standing upon the rocks of Sligo conducting its surf. Engaging from beginning to end, Gleeson has more of a presence here than the God he worships. You can’t convince me that he has ever been this good before. Career-defining is a term that comes to mind when processing the results of the film.

The low road to exaltation never shined like this before. Calvary is a must-see.

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MPAA Rating: R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use Runtime: 102 mins Director : John Michael McDonagh Writer: John Michael McDonagh Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Chris O'Dowd, Kelly Reilly Genre : Drama Tagline: Calvary Memorable Movie Quote: "It's just you have no integrity. That's the worst thing I could say about anybody." Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures Official Site: https://www.facebook.com/CalvaryMovie Release Date: August 1, 2014 (limited) DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: No details available Synopsis : Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is a good priest who is faced with sinister and troubling circumstances brought about by a mysterious member of his parish. Although he continues to comfort his own fragile daughter (Kelly Reilly) and reach out to help members of his church with their various scurrilous moral - and often comic - problems, he feels sinister and troubling forces closing in, and begins to wonder if he will have the courage to face his own personal Calvary.

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‘Calvary’ (2014) Movie Review

By Brad Brevet

In the midst of his confession, a man promises to kill Father James ( Brendan Gleeson ) in one week’s time. Not because he’s a bad priest, but because he’s an innocent priest. His reasoning comes as the result of being raped for several years by a priest when he was a young boy and while the man responsible for such deplorable acts has now died, this confessor believes to kill the criminal would have been worthless anyway, but to kill an innocent priest? Well, that would turn some heads.

These are the opening moments of John Michael McDonagh ‘s sophomore effort Calvary , a movie that left me emotionally rattled in a way I can’t say I’ve experienced in some time. Set in a small Irish village, McDonagh makes good use of a small number of locals, touching on a wealth of societal touchstones including religion, drug abuse, banking scandals, adultery, domestic abuse and so on and so forth. Amid all of this is Father James, stoic while dealing with his own issues.

James has alcoholism in his past, he became a priest following his wife’s death, his daughter ( Kelly Reilly ) is having her own share of issues (most recently an attempted suicide) and his fellow clergyman Father Timothy Leary ( David Wilmot ) is about as out-of-touch as one can get. Yet, he keeps his cool in the face of all this, at least for the most part as he isn’t one to suffer fools, which becomes quite obvious while visiting the village’s resident one-percenter ( Dylan Moran ). Every person Father James runs into tests him in some way, all while the darkness looms and the days tick by.

As much as you could look at this film as a mystery, wondering who exactly it is that threatened Father James and whether or not they will go through with said threat, I found the claustrophobic and ever-increasing darkness of the story to be more than enough to keep my attention. Father James stands as one of the last pillars of innocence in a world where people are lost, have given up and in some cases see death as the only way out. As a priest, Father James accepts these circumstances and attempts to comfort and tend to his flock, but how long can you be surrounded by evil until all innocence is lost?

McDonagh reteams with Brendan Gleeson who starred in his highly comical directorial debut The Guard , and again Gleeson proves why he’s one of our top talents and, for material such as this, a no-brainer choice, and he’s surrounded by an equally talented supporting cast.

Chris O’Dowd plays a man whose wife ( Orla O’Rourke ) is blatantly unfaithful with a local mechanic ( Isaach de Bankole ); M. Emmet Walsh plays an American author prepared to confront his own death; and Aidan Gillen (Littlefinger on “Game of Thrones”) plays an atheist doctor and cocaine addict. In a nearly unrecognizable role, Gleeson’s son, Domhnall Gleeson , plays a serial killer who cannibalized his victims; Pat Shortt plays a disgruntled barman whose establishment will soon be taken from him by the banks; and Owen Sharpe plays a male prostitute with a Bronx accent, whose demons Father James knows lurk near the surface but he never fully coerces them out.

Each and every one of these characters come about as if Father James is circling each layer of Hell until he finally finds himself in the thick of it. Calvary almost plays like a film wondering if good really can prevail over evil or if, perhaps, evil has already won.

I could understand if someone were to take issue with the film, believing it doesn’t necessarily represent the whole of society or suggesting the characters are merely stand-ins for themes McDonagh wishes to explore (because that’s really all they are), but I respected it for something beyond the puppet-like simplicity of its characters. In an era where so many films are set within a post apocalyptic world, Calvary almost feels like a story on the cusp of the apocalypse itself with fire and brimstone bubbling around the edges.

If Calvary had begun with text telling us it was set in 2024 I would have fully bought in. There is a level of foresight to McDonagh’s script, which elegantly touches upon the idea of sin and humanity’s increasing lack of compassion and willingness to forgive. Just take a trip around the Internet and you’ll find any measure of hatred being spewed or turn on the television to any one of the hundreds of reality shows, shows not built on the idea you’ll feel good about the people you’re watching, but built on the idea you’ll most likely hate or resent them all.

Extending beyond the script and performances, Larry Smith ( Only God Forgives , Eyes Wide Shut ) captures Ireland from every gloomy angle and Patrick Cassidy ‘s score elevates that gloom to an even greater degree. You can almost feel the heat from a burning building and as the sea wind whips the tall grass, Cassidy lays the music on thick and foreboding.

Some are finding dark humor in Calvary . I didn’t laugh once. It’s an end of days, loss of faith, innocence, hope etc. kind of movie. It’s a movie I find hard to say I liked, rather opting for words such as respect and admire. My drive home was somber and reflective and it wasn’t until halfway home I realized how much the film had affected my mood. I was in a daze as if the wool had been pulled from over my eyes and still darkness is all I could see.

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Calvary Review

11 Apr 2014

101 minutes

With The Guard, writer-director John Michael McDonagh and character actor-star Brendan Gleeson created a classic Irish comedy-drama. This thematic follow-up darkens the tone considerably. As before, there’s a sense that McDonagh’s twin inspirations are Father Ted and Abel Ferrara, but here the anguish is more raw and traditional whimsy struggles to survive in a country many feel has been literally and figuratively raped by generations of bad priests and now further abused by unethical financiers and corrupt politicians. There are sweet and funny moments, but an undercurrent of anger storms throughout. Quirky character business often segues into spiritually terrifying material. Every pub debate gets vicious and the weather is always foul.

Brendan Gleeson’s Father James is a widower who has come to the church late in life, at what we see is a cost to his grown-up daughter (Kelly Reilly). A former heavy drinker and brawler, he struggles with his own demons even as he takes the brunt of everyone else’s wrath. The stunning confessional scene which begins the film introduces a self-aware streak as Father James admits that the unrepentant penitent’s attention-getting line (“I was seven years old when I first tasted semen”) is a hell of an opening. Though it’s a mystery to the audience which of James’ circle of acquaintances is threatening him, he confides early on that he thinks he knows his would-be killer’s identity. However, the general air of hostility and an escalating campaign against the institution of the church and the person of the priest suggests James isn’t being targeted simply by one of his parishioners. The character eventually outed as the vengeance-seeking abuse victim (it’ll be less of a mystery when next year’s supporting actor nominations are announced) denies one specific act of terror, leaving a talking-point puzzle destined to be an IMDb message-board thread without end.

As in The Guard, McDonagh’s writing is so strong that actors who usually star are willing to sign on for only a couple of scenes or even a few smart lines. This is even more Gleeson’s film, but is studded with superb work from Reilly as the damaged yet loyal daughter, Aidan Gillen as a venomous atheist coroner (his nastiest speech will haunt you), Chris O’Dowd as a butcher relieved that his vamp wife has taken up with a mechanic, Dylan Moran as a self-hating banker and M. Emmet Walsh as a grumbling old writer. Gleeson’s priest shambles from scene to scene, taking a mental beating as he tries to live up to an ideal no-one else — least of all his trendy new church colleagues — believes in anymore. In a fine point of doctrine, his refusal to bring the authorities in or duck out of a date with a would-be killer could even be classed as a passive suicide, though he procures a gun which figures in several sub-plot threads.

It’s more uncomfortable than The Guard, and you probably need to be an Irish Catholic to fully engage with its arguments. However, even in its bleakest moments, it retains a comic, pointed touch.

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Maureen Younger

Film review: calvary.

Calvary is a gem of a film. For starters, it has the eminently watchable Brendan Gleeson as its star, portraying the linchpin of the film, Father James Lavelle. It also benefits from a wonderfully intelligent script by John Michael McDonagh who adeptly deals with complex issues with a great deal of humour and manages to tell an absorbing story, peopled with a myriad of interesting characters. The film also comes across as unashamedly Irish and is all the better for it.

You know you’re in for a treat of a film from the opening scene which is a master class in exposition. We first see Father Lavelle, sitting in the confessional, his face in close up as he listens to one of his parishioners inform him that he plans to kill him Sunday week, as retribution for his years of suffering as a victim of a paedophile priest. The sting in the tail is that the parishioner has chosen Father Lavelle precisely because he has done no wrong. As the would-be assailant points out, there is no point in killing a bad priest; it’s killing a good one that will cause shockwaves. Unfortunately for Father Lavelle, it would seem he has the misfortune of being a good priest in an Ireland which now seems to hold in sheer contempt both religion and above all the institution that Father Lavelle represents, the Catholic Church.

In the course of the film we learn that Father Lavelle had finally followed his vocation to become a priest after the death of his wife, leaving his only child, Fiona, in London. Father Lavelle is a no nonsense priest who takes his duties seriously and sincerely wants to help his parishioners. He’s in stark contrast to the other clergymen depicted in the film who come across more as corporate men in yet another big corporation, or to use Father Lavelle’s phrase as an “accountant in an insurance firm” lacking integrity. However such dedication as Father Lavelle’s comes at a price, a price it would seem his daughter Fiona has paid the most, having felt abandoned first by her mother’s death and then by her father leaving to become a priest in Ireland. Fiona’s emotional turmoil is made clear when Fiona returns to visit her father following an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide.

As someone who’s not Irish, for me the film also provides an interesting snapshot of Irish life. There is the corrupt policeman who made the mistake of trying to arrest a paedophile priest back in the day and paid the price by getting transferred to the sticks. The rich, obnoxious and corrupt financier Michael Fitzgerald, facing possible charges for “irregularities”, he consoles himself that if they arrest him they would have to charge half the financiers in Ireland along with half the bank managers, not to mention a few members of the government. There is the pub landlord whose pub is in the process of being repossessed, the damaged young man, Leo, now working as a prostitute and who seems to have been yet one more victim of a paedophile priest. And then of course there is the Catholic Church. Its place in Irish society, which once seemed unassailable, now totally vilified. In the film Father Lavelle is beaten up, ridiculed and disrespected. Bumping into a young child, he starts up an innocent conversation with her and is met with unadulterated hostility by a father, incandescent with fury that some strange priest is talking to her.

The film deals with themes such as death, suicide, murder, sacrifice, guilt, forgiveness and the unjust nature and randomness of the world we live in. The genius of the film is the sheer dexterity with which John Michael McDonagh imbues the film with such complex ideas. In fact the film is so rich, any detailed review is in danger of ending up as some kind of treatise. There’s the painting that Michael Fitzgerald pisses on for example. It’s not just any painting. It is in fact a famous painting by Holbein called The Ambassadors. (In reality it hangs in the National Gallery in London and is well worth a viewing). The painting features two ambassadors richly dressed, surrounded by numerous objects indicating their wealth and their knowledge. At the bottom of the painting there seems to be an odd white like shape. However looked at from a certain angle this shape morphs into a human skull, presumably showing that underlying life is death even if, as in the painting, it’s often distorted from our view, and regardless of any wealth or knowledge we may acquire in life, death is waiting for all of us. It’s little touches like this that help make the film such a treat to watch,

The various themes of the movie are neatly brought together as we watch Father Lavelle decide how he should react to his life being threatened. Should he act at all? Is it right to kill, even in self-defence? Should he inform the police? Should he keep his rendezvous with his would-be murderer? Should he face his Calvary and atone for the sins of other priests with his life? And such atonement, though it may be considered noble by some, would it serve any real purpose; isn’t it, when all said and done, to acquiesce and meet your death in this way just another form of suicide? A course of action which Father Lavelle chastises Fiona for. Where in fact does the demarcation line fall between self-sacrifice and suicide? As Fiona notes, depending on your point of view, you might, like the Japanese writer she mentions, even include Jesus on a list of famous suicides.

Then there is the question of murder, whether it be the possible murder by the priest’s would-be killer, to Freddie Joyce, the serial killer Father Lavelle visits in prison to the young man Milo who, in a brilliantly written scene, decides he has two choices in life – suicide or to join the army. Not surprisingly Father Lavelle feels there are more options in life and points out that the bible says ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ and does not then go on to provide a list of exceptions.

Death permeates the film, pinpointing the utter randomness of its nature. Not only exemplified by Father Lavelle being targeted for execution for no other reason than he is a good priest but also in the case of the visiting French tourists, caught up in a fatal car crash. The wife is unscathed. The husband is fatally injured. The vicissitudes of fate which the French woman seems to stoically accept. And while the teenagers from the crash lie in the morgue, the aged American writer lives on, even asking Father Lavelle to get him a gun so he can kill himself before he becomes so old, he’s decrepit.

Not surprisingly in a film dealing with the Catholic Church there is also the question of guilt. As the corrupt financier points out there is no punishment for a man like himself. There is no punishment for the guilty. It’s the innocent who pay. While he can afford to piss (literally) on great works of art, it’s the little people like the pub landlord who lose their properties, and who feel abandoned by a rich Catholic Church, with its history of anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis, and which refuses to speak against the bankers who brought Ireland to its knees. And it is good priests like Father Lavelle who pay the price for this church whose reputation is in tatters. It would seem then that the Catholic Church is facing its own Calvary, and it is good priests such as Father Lavelle who get caught up in the crossfire.

Thankfully then with such heavy themes, the film is written with such intelligence and wit and has such a fine actor as Brendan Gleeson in the lead role. So if you’re on the hunt for a well-written, well-acted, thought-provoking, intelligent movie, populated with some great characters, a massive dollop of humour, and a fantastic lead actor then Calvary is the film for you.

© Maureen Younger and www.maureenyounger.com [2013-2019]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Maureen Younger and www.maureenyounger.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

One Comment

Excellent review of a truly under-appreciated film…. thanks for bringing it back to peoples’ attention with your perceptive review. What makes it so special, as you say, is how this film “deals with themes such as death, suicide, murder, sacrifice, guilt, forgiveness and the unjust nature and randomness of the world we live in” — and does so in an entertaining and subtle way.

Thursday, July 31, 2014

'calvary' movie review.

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Movie Review: Calvary

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Reel Rating: 5 out of 5 Reels MPAA Rating: R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use Released in Theaters: Aug. 1, 2014 Genre: Drama, Crime Runtime: 100 minutes Directed by: John Michael McDonagh Studio: Fox Searchlight Cast: Brendan Gleeson, Kelly Reilly, Chris O’Dowd Official Site: Calvary

SYNOPSIS: After an Irish priest’s life is threatened during a confession, he must battle the dark forces closing in over the course of a week.

The story is set in a small Irish seaside town, where Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) does his best to keep the folks uplifted and moving forward. It’s not an easy task. Everyone is battling their own demons, including the good Father, who hasn’t touched a drop of alcohol in ages.

During a Sunday confession, a voice tells him through the metal grate that as a child, he was raped by a priest. Now he intends to kill a priest. Not a bad priest, but a good priest. More specifically, Father Lavelle. And he has one week to get his affairs in order, before he’s to meet the killer on the massive and almighty beach.

So the countdown begins as the movie ticks down the days of the week. We follow Father Lavelle as he goes about the task of helping his flock as best he can — giving Last Rites to a man as a young wife grieves, helping an elderly man with end of life issues, re-connecting with his grown daughter (he was married before he joined the priesthood), just off a failed suicide attempt.

Finally, Sunday arrives, and Father Lavelle heads to the beach for his fateful meeting with the person who might be his murderer. But what will happen?

“Calvary” is just one of those films that’s going to stay with you, whether it’s the stunning performances, especially of Gleeson, who worked with director John Michael McDonagh and cinematographer Larry Smith on 2011’s “The Guard.” Every single scene in “Calvary” is well-planned, well-written, well-shot and well-acted. There’s not a wrong note anywhere.

Which is why I was shocked when two people sitting near me in the theater got up and left about five minutes before it ended. Then a small crowd of us gathered outside the theater to discuss the film and the ending and the people who left. I won’t give anything away, other than to say that I greatly appreciated both the film and the ending.

THE DETAILS:

Sex/Nudity: A male character, shown shirtless a few times, is a gigolo with many lovers. A promiscuous woman cheats on her husband with another man. References to pornography and various sexual acts.

Violence/Gore: A man describes being raped by a priest when he was a child, including the phrases “anally,” “orally,” and “I bled.” A few scenes involve guns, sometimes fired. A character is shot twice, with blood spurting from his body. A young woman has bandages on her wrist from a failed suicide attempt. A woman has a black eye, the results of abuse from a man. A dog is shown dead after being slit at the throat. A church is burned, and there’s mention of cannibalism. A man gets into a fight, which results in bloody cuts and bruises.

Profanity: Includes “s–t,” “f–k,” “c–t,” “prick,” “a–hole,” “ass,” “bastard,” “d–k,” “hell” and “piss.”

Drugs/Alcohol: A character struggles with alcoholism and gets drunk and disorderly in one scene. People drink at a local pub, sometimes to excess. Characters snort cocaine in a bar bathroom, and smoke pot and cigarettes. References to LSD and crystal meth. A joke about a boy stealing ceremonially wine.

Which Kids Will Like It? This one really isn’t for kids, but probably ok for ages 17 and older.

Will Grownups Like It? “Calvary” is an excellent film that’s sure to do well during this awards season.

JANE’S REEL RATING SYSTEM: One Reel – Even the Force can’t save it. Two Reels – Coulda been a contender Three Reels – Something to talk about. Four Reels – You want the truth? Great flick! Five Reels – Wow! The stuff dreams are made of.

Jane Boursaw

Movie Review: Calvary

We usually just discuss books around here but this movie was unusual enough that I wanted to share it also. Also, there is a brief H.P. Lovecraft inclusion. Is there anything that Lovecraft can’t improve? I think not.

============ Not for the faint-of-heart. But simply astounding. A real masterpiece that provides food for thought for everyone from Catholics to atheists. ============

“No point in killing a bad priest. I’m going to kill you because you’re innocent.”

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is hearing confessions when the parishioner on the other side of the screen tells him about five years of childhood abuse at the hands of a bad priest. The man plans to exact revenge by murdering Father James, who is given a week to wind up his affairs. It is a small community and the priest recognizes his parishioner’s voice, although that identity is not revealed to the audience. Father James takes no immediate action but spends the week tending to his small flock. They are an erring lot who are flawed, wounded, and deeply critical of Father James, who they verbally flay for the suffering, real and imagined, that they have experienced at the hands of the Catholic Church.

Father James’ life is further complicated by his tenuous relationship with his daughter, Fiona. (Father James entered the priesthood after his wife died.) We also see him contrasted with his bishop and a fellow priest, both of whom are not bad men but who are not fully engaged in their vocations. This leaves the audience in the position of trying to suss out the mystery while observing a truly good priest struggle to live his vocation under seemingly impossible circumstances.

Writer and director John Michael McDonagh has given us a layered and nuanced film made for anyone who has ever struggled with faith, forgiveness, betrayal, and revenge. Above all, he looks at the cost to good priests who must struggle with the human fallout and suffering caused by bad ones. Brendan Gleeson, heading up an excellent cast, portrays the good priest with subtlety and depth which allow you to see into his soul as the week progresses.

Some reviews have criticized the villagers as quirky, broad caricatures. I felt that was intentional and that it would be a mistake to think they are intended as realistic personalities. The sharply drawn characters give Calvary the feeling of a morality play where each is a personification of a different sin or modern struggle with religion. Yet McDonagh doesn’t allow it to rest there. In each case we are given glimpses, however brief, below the brittle facades to the human beings beneath. The director does not intend to allow us the detachment which has led to the problems his film highlights.

The most fully realized characters and relationship are Father James and Fiona who translate the struggles to live an authentic faith into real human terms for us. The insistence on the value of each person when combined with Father James’ absolute integrity are the messages at the core of this movie.

You may see this billed as a dark comedy. I think that is inaccurate. It is a drama, straight up. Yes, there are some lighter moments but that is because life itself has some lighter moments even in the midst of trouble and darkness. It is no comedy.

Fundamentalists of both sorts, from atheist to Catholic, will either celebrate or mourn this movie as an attack on the Catholic Church. That approach is far too simple. Those who know real truth is never that easy will appreciate the way McDonagh shows both sides without setting up straw men to knock down.

The movie never felt like an attack on the Church to me. Instead of looking at the “evil clergy” McDonagh took the novel and welcome approach of presenting a good priest who doesn’t defend horrific actions of bad men but also never denies his own vocation in the very Church to which they all belong. In fact, the inclusion of an angry Buddhist highlights the point that the problem of authentic faith is not constrained to any one religion but is a matter of each person’s cooperation with God and others in their community.

If Calvary makes you uncomfortable, it is meant to do so. That’s what the truth does. In this magnificent film we are shown Truth shimmering beneath the surface of a week in the life of this good priest. And given grace for viewers to take back into the world with them.

Rated R for sexual references, language, brief strong violence and some drug use.

NOTE I had the opportunity to interview the director/writer John Michael McDonagh. That interview will appear soon.

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Andrew garfield's jesus movie role continues a very specific 8-year career trend.

Andrew Garfield reuniting with Martin Scorsese in his upcoming Jesus movie would continue a notable trend in the actor's career over the last 8 years.

Garfield's potential role in Scorsese's A Life of Jesus movie would continue his trend of playing Christian characters onscreen.
Though his casting has not been confirmed, Garfield could end up portraying Jesus himself in A Life of Jesus.
Garfield's fascination with the finitude of existence through spirituality explains his tendency to take on religious film roles.

Andrew Garfield 's role in Martin Scorsese's A Life of Jesus movie would continue a trend in the actor's career that began in 2016. Ever since his feature film debut in 2007's Boy A, Garfield has had a prolific film career playing a variety of different roles. After his unreal three-movie run in 2021, Garfield took a few years off from film work, but he's getting back in the game with multiple movies lined up. Garfield will play astronomer Carl Sagan in Sebastián Lelio's Voyagers and star in Boy A director John Crowley's upcoming romcom We Live in Time.

In 2021, Garfield starred in The Eyes of Tammy Faye, Tick, Tick... Boom! , and Spider-Man: No Way Home.

In addition to these two films, Garfield may have secured himself another new role in Martin Scorsese's upcoming movie about Jesus Christ. Based on Shūsaku Endō’s 1973 book A Life of Jesus , Scorsese's next movie will be set in the present day and explore Christ's core teachings and principles. While no casting has been confirmed, Scorsese is hoping to reunite with Garfield for A Life of Jesus after first working together on his 2016 historical drama Silence. If this comes to fruition, A Life of Jesus would continue an eight-year trend in Garfield's acting career.

Andrew Garfield Has A History Of Playing Christians In Religious Projects

Garfield has played christian characters in three movies & a miniseries.

Some of Andrew Garfield's best movies and TV shows have dealt heavily with religion , beginning with his first Scorsese movie , Silence . Garfield played Sebastião Rodrigues, a Portuguese Jesuit priest in the 17th century who travels to Japan with fellow Jesuit priest Francisco Garupe (Adam Driver) to locate their mentor, Cristóvão Ferreira (Liam Neeson), after he was forced to renounce his Christian faith in Japan for fear of persecution. Like Life of Jesus, Silence was also based on the Endō novel of the same name from 1966.

Starring in Scorsese's A Life of Jesus movie would contribute to Garfield's established pattern of playing religious characters onscreen.

That same year, Garfield also starred in Mel Gibson's war movie Hacksaw Ridge, based on Terry Benedict's 2004 documentary The Conscientious Objector. Garfield played real-life US Army combat medic Desmond Doss, who refused to carry or use a weapon or firearm in World War II due to his pacifist beliefs as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. Five years later, Garfield starred in the 2021 biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye, based on the 2000 World of Wonder documentary of the same name. Garfield played the eponymous Tammy Faye (Jessica Chastain)'s husband and fellow televangelist, Jim Bakker.

Garfield received his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor for his performance in Hacksaw Ridge. His second was for his role as playwright Jonathan Larson in the 2021 film adaptation of Larson's musical Tick, Tick... Boom!

Garfield continued this movie trend in Under the Banner of Heaven , a 2022 true crime miniseries based on Jon Krakauer's 2003 non-fiction book of the same name. Garfield played Detective Jeb Pyre, a devout Mormon who investigates a double murder connected to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which earned him his first Emmy nomination. Clearly, Garfield has a long-running habit of playing Christian characters onscreen.

Hulu's New True Crime Drama Is A Sad Reminder To Watch Andrew Garfield's Critically Acclaimed Show From 2 Years Ago

Martin scorsese's jesus movie gives andrew garfield another religious character to play, garfield might even play the titular role of jesus.

Starring in Scorsese's A Life of Jesus movie would contribute to Garfield's established pattern of playing religious characters onscreen. Scorsese didn't specify who he foresaw Garfield playing in A Life of Jesus, but it's possible Garfield could end up taking on the lead role of Jesus Christ . It doesn't get more Christian than Christ himself.

A Life of Jesus would not only maintain his track record of playing Christian characters in general, but also establish a new trend of playing these types of roles in Scorsese movies after Silence.

No matter who he plays in Scorsese's Jesus movie, the role will be inherently faith-based, keeping Garfield's religious character trend alive. In fact, A Life of Jesus would not only maintain his track record of playing Christian characters in general, but also establish a new trend of playing these types of roles in Scorsese movies after Silence.

Garfield explained that he's fascinated by the imminence of death and finds himself drawn to films that explore these themes through spirituality.

Martin Scorsese's New Movie Can Make Up For Divisive $23 Million Box Office Bomb From 8 Years Ago

Why andrew garfield plays so many religious characters in movies & shows, garfield is drawn to roles that explore the meaning of existence through spirituality.

Though it's not completely intentional, Garfield is aware of this curious pattern in his film roles . When asked about his tendency to take on characters who are " defined by their faith or loss of it " while promoting The Eyes of Tammy Faye , Garfield explained that he's fascinated by the imminence of death and finds himself drawn to films that explore these themes through spirituality. " I have this endless curiosity towards...the spiritual dimension of being alive, " Garfield told Collider . " You know, the fact that we're all going to die, and how do we get ready for that? Because it's coming. "

" That's what spirituality is for me ," he continued. " It's a kind of awareness of the finite nature of being here, and making sense and meaning out of it while we are here . And where do the main world religions get it right? Where do they go astray? " Given his interest in exploring religion onscreen and his history with these types of roles and Scorsese himself, Andrew Garfield would be perfect for A Life of Jesus .

Source: Collider

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Critic’s Notebook: ‘Civil War’ and the elusiveness of the of-the-moment movie

This image released by Mubi shows a scene from the film “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” (Mubi via AP)

This image released by Sideshow/Janus shows a scene from the film “The Beast” (Carole Bethuel/ Sideshow/Janus via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Kirsten Dunst in a scene from “Civil War.” (A24 via AP)

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NEW YORK (AP) — The movies are good at resurrecting the past and imagining the future, but pinning down the present can be tricky. Movies take a long time to make. Once you’ve gone from idea to script to production to edit and, finally, to audiences, several years might have passed.

Take “Civil War,” Alex Garland’s seemingly very of-the-moment, election-year release that led the box office over last weekend. Garland wrote it in 2020 as the pandemic was unfolding and a presidential election was approaching. “Civil War” arrived in theaters four years later, loaded with the anxieties of societal breakdown and concern for the endgame to our current political extremism.

But it also very consciously stepped away from the bitter partisanship of today. “Civil War” sparked a lot of discussion by pairing California and Texas together in battle, but that’s far from the only gesture Garland made to avoid channeling the current, highly charged fissures of American society.

The movie, perhaps out of fear of being too contemporary, is set in a near-future dystopia. Scant mention is made of race, income inequality or climate change. It has connective tissue with many current issues, particularly the plight of journalists. But it’s telling that even a provocative movie that imagines America in all-out warfare is timid about today.

This image released by Magnolia Pictures shows Joanna Arnow, left, and Scott Cohen in a scene from "The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed." (Magnolia Pictures via AP)

Yet even if “Civil War” was bracingly current, would that have been appropriate in an election year? More importantly, would we even want to see it?

With many exceptions, the movie year in multiplexes can seem forever toggling between the period dramas of Oscar season and the sequels of summer, a seemingly willful dance to forever avoid the here and now. To a large degree, Hollywood runs on intellectual property, which, by its definition, is old. That didn’t stop “Barbie” from being highly relevant 64 years after the doll’s creation, or a 70-year-old Godzilla from showing some new moves , or 62-year-old Spider-Man proving surprisingly adept at reflecting our chaotic digital lives.

But finding movies free of decades-old baggage or loads of CGI that masks the real world can take some effort. That dearth has made a pair of spring releases — Radu Jude’s “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” and Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” — all the more thrilling for their eagerness to confront our present reality.

“Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World,” the latest from the 47-year-old Romanian writer and director Jude, begins with an iPhone alarm clock going off. On the disheveled nightstand of Angela Răducanu (Ilinca Manolache) is a wine glass, paperback Proust and a clock with no hands, beneath which it reads “It’s later than you think.”

Angela’s life is a discombobulated swirl of GPS-navigated traffic, boorish men and work errands. Everything from the war in Ukraine to gun violence to Pornhub is filtered into her daily experience while she drives to appointments to make workplace-safety videos for a production company.

Angela occasionally boils over, though she mostly vents through TikTok, spouting misogynist incel rants with a filter that cloaks her identity. The persona is modeled after the online influencer Andrew Tate, who is charged in Bucharest with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. He’s denied the allegations.

Interspersed with Angela’s story are excerpts from Lucian Bratu’s 1981 film “Angela Goes On.” That Angela (played by Dorina Lazăr) spends her days driving, too, as a taxi driver, and the juxtaposition between the two Angelas invites a comparison between that era and now. Today, filming in a harsh monochrome, doesn’t come off looking so good — even next to the communist Romania of the 1981 film.

Bonello’s “The Beast,” which expands this Friday in theaters, also uses separate timelines to illuminate present reality while pondering if we aren’t just doomed to repeat the past.

The movie, inspired by the Henry James novella “The Beast in the Jungle,” follows two lovers — Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay) —through three time periods: 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and 2044 Paris.

In the first chapter, Gabrielle and Louis are brought together — not for the first time, Louis reminds her — in belle époque Paris just before the Great Flood of 1910. Their connection is palpable but the encounter ends in tragedy, in an underwater sequence of haunting power in the doll factory of Gabrielle’s husband.

The switch, then, from costume drama to more-or-less contemporary Los Angeles is jarring. But our characters are still some distant versions of their prior selves. Gabrielle, previously a pianist, is now an actor. Louis is a misogynistic vlogger whose incel delusions — along with some strange force drawing them back together — bring him again into Gabrielle’s orbit.

The echoes of their past lives are even more acute in 2044, by which time artificial intelligence has spread into all corners of life and Gabrielle is considering undergoing a procedure to “purify” her DNA. She’s told she won’t lose her emotions but will feel more “serenely.” The bookends of past and present in “The Beast” put dehumanization — from doll-making to A.I. — in disquieting context.

It’s not a coincidence that both “The Beast” and “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the Earth” wrestle with incel culture. To do so may be a necessary ingredient for making sense of our present reality. Sean Price Williams’ “The Sweet East,” a scuzzy, vital picaresque from last year, glibly but perceptively surveyed a ridiculous America of worlds-apart subcultures, conspiracy-addled shooters and bookish white supremacists. With a cast including Simon Rex, Jeremy O. Harris, Ayo Edebiri and Jacob Elordi, but a central heroine in Lillian (Talia Ryder), “The Sweet East” played like an “Alice in Wonderland” for now – an absurd odyssey for absurd times.

None of these films — “The Beast,” “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the Earth,” “The Sweet East” — are perfect, or even trying to be. But, unlike “Civil War,” they aren’t dodging anything. The present may be messy and muddled but these films, in very distinct and outlandish ways, are at least trying to pin it down.

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Critic’s Pick

‘Civil War’ Review: We Have Met the Enemy and It Is Us. Again.

In Alex Garland’s tough new movie, a group of journalists led by Kirsten Dunst, as a photographer, travels a United States at war with itself.

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‘Civil War’ | Anatomy of a Scene

The writer and director alex garland narrates a sequence from his film..

“My name is Alex Garland and I’m the writer director of ‘Civil War’. So this particular clip is roughly around the halfway point of the movie and it’s these four journalists and they’re trying to get, in a very circuitous route, from New York to DC, and encountering various obstacles on the way. And this is one of those obstacles. What they find themselves stuck in is a battle between two snipers. And they are close to one of the snipers and the other sniper is somewhere unseen, but presumably in a large house that sits over a field and a hill. It’s a surrealist exchange and it’s surrounded by some very surrealist imagery, which is they’re, in broad daylight in broad sunshine, there’s no indication that we’re anywhere near winter in the filming. In fact, you can kind of tell it’s summer. But they’re surrounded by Christmas decorations. And in some ways, the Christmas decorations speak of a country, which is in disrepair, however silly it sounds. If you haven’t put away your Christmas decorations, clearly something isn’t going right.” “What’s going on?” “Someone in that house, they’re stuck. We’re stuck.” “And there’s a bit of imagery. It felt like it hit the right note. But the interesting thing about that imagery was that it was not production designed. We didn’t create it. We actually literally found it. We were driving along and we saw all of these Christmas decorations, basically exactly as they are in the film. They were about 100 yards away, just piled up by the side of the road. And it turned out, it was a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival, and he’d gone bankrupt. And he had decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field, who was then absolutely furious. So in a way, there’s a loose parallel, which is the same implication that exists within the film exists within real life.” “You don’t understand a word I say. Yo. What’s over there in that house?” “Someone shooting.” “It’s to do with the fact that when things get extreme, the reasons why things got extreme no longer become relevant and the knife edge of the problem is all that really remains relevant. So it doesn’t actually matter, as it were, in this context, what side they’re fighting for or what the other person’s fighting for. It’s just reduced to a survival.”

By Manohla Dargis

A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. In Washington, D.C., the president is holed up in the White House; in a spookily depopulated New York, desperate people wait for water rations. It’s the near-future, and rooftop snipers, suicide bombers and wild-eyed randos are in the fight while an opposition faction with a two-star flag called the Western Forces, comprising Texas and California — as I said, this is speculative fiction — is leading the charge against what remains of the federal government. If you’re feeling triggered, you aren’t alone.

It’s mourning again in America, and it’s mesmerizingly, horribly gripping. Filled with bullets, consuming fires and terrific actors like Kirsten Dunst running for cover, the movie is a what-if nightmare stoked by memories of Jan. 6. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? If that sounds harrowing, you’re right. It’s one thing when a movie taps into childish fears with monsters under the bed; you’re eager to see what happens because you know how it will end (until the sequel). Adult fears are another matter.

In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. A pop cultural savant, he made a splashy zeitgeist-ready debut with his 1996 best seller “The Beach,” a novel about a paradise that proves deadly, an evergreen metaphor for life and the basis for a silly film . That things in the world are not what they seem, and are often far worse, is a theme that Garland has continued pursuing in other dark fantasies, first as a screenwriter (“ 28 Days Later ”), and then as a writer-director (“ Ex Machina ”). His résumé is populated with zombies, clones and aliens, though reliably it is his outwardly ordinary characters you need to keep a closer watch on.

By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. It’s unclear as to why the war started or who fired the first shot. Garland does scatter some hints; in one ugly scene, a militia type played by a jolting, scarily effective Jesse Plemons asks captives “what kind of American” they are. Yet whatever divisions preceded the conflict are left to your imagination, at least partly because Garland assumes you’ve been paying attention to recent events. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

‘Civil War’ Is Designed to Disturb You

A woman with a bulletproof vest that says “Press” stands in a smoky city street.

One thing that remains familiar amid these ruins is the movie’s old-fashioned faith in journalism. Dunst, who’s sensational, plays Lee, a war photographer who works for Reuters alongside her friend, a reporter, Joel (the charismatic Wagner Moura). They’re in New York when you meet them, milling through a crowd anxiously waiting for water rations next to a protected tanker. It’s a fraught scene; the restless crowd is edging into mob panic, and Lee, camera in hand, is on high alert. As Garland’s own camera and Joel skitter about, Lee carves a path through the chaos, as if she knows exactly where she needs to be — and then a bomb goes off. By the time it does, an aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is also in the mix.

The streamlined, insistently intimate story takes shape once Lee, Joel, Jessie and a veteran reporter, Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), pile into a van and head to Washington. Joel and Lee are hoping to interview the president (Nick Offerman), and Sammy and Jessie are riding along largely so that Garland can make the trip more interesting. Sammy serves as a stabilizing force (Henderson fills the van with humanizing warmth), while Jessie plays the eager upstart Lee takes under her resentful wing. It’s a tidily balanced sampling that the actors, with Garland’s banter and via some cozy downtime, turn into flesh-and-blood personalities, people whose vulnerability feeds the escalating tension with each mile.

As the miles and hours pass, Garland adds diversions and hurdles, including a pair of playful colleagues, Tony and Bohai (Nelson Lee and Evan Lai), and some spooky dudes guarding a gas station. Garland shrewdly exploits the tense emptiness of the land, turning strangers into potential threats and pretty country roads into ominously ambiguous byways. Smartly, he also recurrently focuses on Lee’s face, a heartbreakingly hard mask that Dunst lets slip brilliantly. As the journey continues, Garland further sketches in the bigger picture — the dollar is near-worthless, the F.B.I. is gone — but for the most part, he focuses on his travelers and the engulfing violence, the smoke and the tracer fire that they often don’t notice until they do.

Despite some much-needed lulls (for you, for the narrative rhythm), “Civil War” is unremittingly brutal or at least it feels that way. Many contemporary thrillers are far more overtly gruesome than this one, partly because violence is one way unimaginative directors can put a distinctive spin on otherwise interchangeable material: Cue the artful fountains of arterial spray. Part of what makes the carnage here feel incessant and palpably realistic is that Garland, whose visual approach is generally unfussy, doesn’t embellish the violence, turning it into an ornament of his virtuosity. Instead, the violence is direct, at times shockingly casual and unsettling, so much so that its unpleasantness almost comes as a surprise.

If the violence feels more intense than in a typical genre shoot ’em up, it’s also because, I think, with “Civil War,” Garland has made the movie that’s long been workshopped in American political discourse and in mass culture, and which entered wider circulation on Jan. 6. The raw power of Garland’s vision unquestionably owes much to the vivid scenes that beamed across the world that day when rioters, some wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “ MAGA civil war ,” swarmed the Capitol. Even so, watching this movie, I also flashed on other times in which Americans have relitigated the Civil War directly and not, on the screen and in the streets.

Movies have played a role in that relitigation for more than a century, at times grotesquely. Two of the most famous films in history — D.W. Griffith’s 1915 racist epic “The Birth of a Nation” (which became a Ku Klux Klan recruitment tool) and the romantic 1939 melodrama “Gone With the Wind” — are monuments to white supremacy and the myth of the Southern Lost Cause. Both were critical and popular hits. In the decades since, filmmakers have returned to the Civil War era to tell other stories in films like “Glory,” “Lincoln” and “Django Unchained” that in addressing the American past inevitably engage with its present.

There are no lofty or reassuring speeches in “Civil War,” and the movie doesn’t speak to the better angels of our nature the way so many films try to. Hollywood’s longstanding, deeply American imperative for happy endings maintains an iron grip on movies, even in ostensibly independent productions. There’s no such possibility for that in “Civil War.” The very premise of Garland’s movie means that — no matter what happens when or if Lee and the rest reach Washington — a happy ending is impossible, which makes this very tough going. Rarely have I seen a movie that made me so acutely uncomfortable or watched an actor’s face that, like Dunst’s, expressed a nation’s soul-sickness so vividly that it felt like an X-ray.

Civil War Rated R for war violence and mass death. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In theaters.

An earlier version of this review misidentified an organization in the Civil War in the movie. It is the Western Forces, not the Western Front.

How we handle corrections

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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