The Movie: 'Calvary'

We went to see 'Calvary' today -- I'd say it's great acting in search of a decent script.  

In the movie's first scene, Father James Lavelle sits in a confessional in rural Ireland while a parishioner tells him that he will kill him the following Sunday on the beach and that he has a week to 'get his affairs in order'.  Though the parishioner calls him a good priest, Father James will be killed because years earlier as a boy of six the parishioner was raped by a bad priest for several years and neither the church nor the authorities did anything about it.  Therefore, a good priest must pay for the deeds of the bad priest and the inaction of the church.

Official poster for 'Calvary'

What follows is a series of mostly one-on-one conversations between Father James and his colleague, his bishop, the police chief, his daughter (he became a priest after his wife died), and assorted members of his congregation and the rural community at large.  We learn from Father James (Brendan Gleeson) that he knows who the parishioner is, but won't tell his superiors or the authorities, but it is often unclear who knows about the threat on his life.  As the days tick by toward the fateful day, Father James becomes increasingly desperate and erratic.

Gleeson is magnificent as Father James and the supporting cast seems convincing.  But the premise and execution are perplexing and often infuriating.  The digressions into the lives of the other characters seem more like stalling tactics, sometimes almost like a series of sketch comedy routines.  Even when some of them advance the characterization of Father James as a good priest they also seem to uncover flaws in his character.  John Michael McDonagh wrote and directed this over-praised film.