Director John Michael McDonagh's Calvary lays out its stark premise in a brilliant opening scene. Irish priest Father James (Brendan Gleeson) sits in the darkness of a confessional, while an unseen individual relates a harrowing tale of childhood sexual abuse by a Catholic cleric. The offending priest is long dead, so the penitent has selected a surrogate target for his vengeance. The person behind the screen vows that in seven days, “I'm going to kill you, Father.” This opening possesses a fearsome dramatic gravity: everything that follows is the slow-burn payoff for that unnerving pledge.
Father James later reveals to a bishop that he suspects the identity of his would-be killer, but feels honor-bound to keep it a secret. Calvary is thus not really a whodunit murder mystery. Underscoring the point, everyone in Father James' tiny country parish acts suspiciously in the following days, almost to the point of the absurd. (In this, Calvary recalls, of all things, Wes Craven's Scream.) The film is truly a study in how a man of God might react to a looming death sentence, one meted out by a member of his own flock. Father James' seven days of good works, reflection, and suffering evoke the Passion of Christ, although the priest is no saintly figure, just a flawed man with a stubborn sort of integrity.
Gleeson is a performer of terrific charisma, but he is often shunted into one-note roles. Director McDonagh's screenplay provides the prolific Irish actor with a protagonist who is alternately genial, irritable, contemplative, and ferocious. The supporting characters at times shade into the cartoonish, and Father James' parishioners are remarkably irreligious for rural Irishfolk, but such exaggerations are fitting for a story that proves to be a dark fable of moral confusion.
Calvary opens Friday, August 15 at Plaza Frontenac Cinema (1701 S Lindbergh, 314-994-3733).
