“Killing a priest on a
Sunday, that would be a good one know.” During a confessional, Sligo priest
Father James is told that he will be killed on the next Sabbath, not because he
is a bad priest, in fact quite the reverse, but because he is a well-respected
man of God and well thought of by his congregation. He has been subjected to
this death threat to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church and a
paedophilic priest that was never brought to justice and has since passed away.
The confessionee tells of systematic abuse where sexual acts were performed on
him as a young lad over a period of many years leaving him in a disturbed
state. We spend the following week in the company of Father James who knows who
has threatened him, but we are left to guess which of his rather unsavoury
parishioners will or will not carry out the death threat.
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| The beautiful Sligo countryside. |
We get to meet the human flotsam that are continually
challenging James Lavelle’s commitment to his faith. There’s the rich local
tycoon (Dylan Moran) whose wealth had not stopped his wife and children from
leaving him, the cuckolded local butcher (Chris O’Dowd) whose promiscuous wife
Veronica (Orla O’Rourke) seems to be up for sex with any one except her husband
and her latest conquest Simon (Isaach de Blankole) an African motor mechanic and
there’s a very cynical doctor (Aidan Gillen) who seems to be obsessed with suffering
and we must not forget the sexually frustrated Milo (Killian Scott). As one of
our audience remarked during the discussion that followed the screening, “more
a whose-gonna-do-it than a whodunit.”[1] Like
John Michael McDonagh’s first feature film The Guard
(2011) Calvary (2014), which is the penultimate film of this seasons
Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club programme, has little to do with
social realism and is far darker than his debut movie and is not a comedy,
black or otherwise!
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| Some of the most tender scenes are between the priest and his daughter. |
Introduced by Julie McMorran who informed us that McDonagh,
who was born in England of Irish decent, also wrote the screenplay for
tonight’s film and was the brother of writer and director Martin McDonagh who
was responsible for Six Shooter
(2004), In Bruges (2008) and Seven
Psychopaths (2012). Both of the
brothers have a slightly different approach to presenting a story, which
normally allows a sense of compassion for the main protagonist and both tend to
use Irish actors including Brendon Gleeson who played Donnelly in Six Shooter,
Ken in In Bruges, Gerry Boyle in The Guard and Father James in John Michaels
latest film.
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| Will the church come to Father James aid? |
Unlike the young priest in his church Father James is not
naive man but one who has lived and loved in the non-secular world. He has been
an alcoholic, was widowed and has a daughter who comes to visit him from her
home in London. In fact some of the most tender and emotional scenes in the
film are between the priest and his daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly) who has
recently attempted suicide. It was
generally agreed by the RBCFT audience that this well written film got very
much darker as the story went on and did not have the humour that the directors
debut film contained. However it did set out some very interesting questions
mainly involving people’s faith and their belief in a superior being. Described
as a ‘terminal illness melodrama’[2] a
powerful, and at times moving story, about a man who is deemed guilty by
association and like Christ is punished for the sins of others.
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| Will it be the end for James Lavelle? |
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