Review of Calvary (2014) by Stanley F — 22 Apr 2014

Calvary is an Irishman's corrosive comment on the state of his nation. Brendan Gleeson plays Father James, a priest tending his flock in Sligo, with lots of atmospheric panoramic shots of the Emerald Isle setting the scene.

But we soon see that no-one here is happy with their lot, and there is a biting cynicism at the heart of the films' Beano-type caricatures. What starts as humour, soon morphs into anger and hostility, which would seem to represent the Irish's disillusionment with their Church and above all, their priests. Fr James pays the price for being the priest left to take the flak - he is palpably a man doing his best to minister to his errant flock, who increasingly let him know that his presence is not welcome, and actually they are very angry that he no longer can offer them the foil to their self-destructive behaviour. There is no balance now, once the pristhood is shown to be as human as the rest of us. It is the human- unspoken point of supporting our priests - that they live the righteous life in view of God whilst we grub around in the shadows, content that 'someone' is taking care of all that godly stuff, whilst we get on with taking our poison. Once the priests, tarred all together with the brush of paedophilia, fall in our own minds, then what is the point of them, and what is to become of us?

Fr James heads towards his own Calvary, or a least this scriptwriter's opinion of it, which is the old chestnut of "dying in the place of another". One of Fr James' parishioners informs him in the confessional that he will kill him in a week's time. The rest of the film follows his days as he struggles without success to find any meaningful human help with his decision as to whether to flee or stay and face his likely death. It is significant that the only spiritual insight of the film comes from a French woman, widowed by drink-driving youngsters. An outsider, in other words. There is no spiritual enlightenment in Ireland at all, if you take the film at face value- even Fr James spends less than a minute in prayer the whole week, which might have been a good place to have started, and then to have remained.

As so often, it seems to be misunderstood that Christ died as a substitute for us all, instead of the harder truth that he died showing us that we all have to die in order to live, that God is organically connected to his beloved creation, and that death is always followed, through Grace, by resurrection.