UNITED STATES
The Valley Catholic
By John Mulderig
NEW YORK (CNS) — Set in rural Ireland, the bleak but powerful serio-comedy “Calvary” (Fox Searchlight) kicks off with a startling premise. In the confessional, a grown victim of childhood sex abuse by a priest tells Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), the dedicated pastor of a County Sligo parish, that in a week’s time he intends to avenge himself by killing the innocent clergyman.
With the perpetrator of the crimes against him dead, and despairing of being healed by therapy, the victim reasons that to take the life of a cleric would draw people’s attention.
As writer-director John Michael McDonagh chronicles the seven days that follow Father James’ life-threatening encounter, we learn that this thoroughly decent but otherwise ordinary man of the cloth is a widower and father ordained after his wife’s death.
He deals with his emotionally fragile daughter (Kelly Reilly) and with the variety of errant or merely eccentric souls who make up his small flock (including Chris O’Dowd, Orla O’Rourke, Dylan Moran, Aiden Gillen and M. Emmet Walsh), all the while wavering about how to respond to the threat on his life.
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