UNITED STATES
Boston Globe
By Tom Russo | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT AUGUST 07, 2014
The biblical theme of a messiah dying for our sins gets a ripped-from-the-headlines workout in “Calvary,” a weighty Irish indie from writer-director John Michael McDonagh and lead Brendan Gleeson (“Harry Potter,” McDonagh’s “The Guard”). Taking its title from the site where Christ was crucified, the controversy-courting film has a lot of Catholic church business (and doctrine) on its mind, and veers from poetically eloquent to jarringly blunt in hashing it all out.
The provocative discourse frequently elevates the movie above what’s ultimately a familiar pedigree — arthouse import showing us around a picturesque British Isles outpost exaggeratedly populated by characters who are odd, if not flat-out messed-up. But the mood also keeps some mischievous touches from providing the black-comic relief that McDonagh intends, and even slightly undermines the suspense.
The movie opens with Gleeson’s sage Father James in a confessional, listening to the unseen parishioner on the other side of the screen reveal in very graphic terms that a priest repeatedly molested him as a boy. (“Certainly a startling opening line,” says Gleeson’s distressed character, in a darkly self-referential bit of dialogue.) The man is murderously vengeful, and with his old tormentor long dead, he’s deliberately targeting an innocent clergyman to make his statement more shocking and impactful. Some supporters of sexual abuse survivors have charged McDonagh with turning victim into villain. Mostly, it feels like it’s left to us to judge.
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