Calvary

Year 16, Day 91 - 3/31/24 - Movie #4,691

BEFORE: Happy Easter, but it's not just Easter Sunday, it's the last day of March, so here are my format stats for the month: 

11 Movies watched on cable (saved to DVD): Marry Me, Man Up, I Do... Until I Don't, Stanley & Iris, Waiting to Exhale, Nostalgia, Begin Again, The Banshees of Inisherin, Lying and Stealing, Mr. Malcolm's List, 3 Days to Kill

5 Movies watched on cable (not saved): Ira & Abby, Dragged Across Concrete, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Conan the Barbarian (2011), Calvary

5 watched on Netflix: Beauty, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Heart of Stone, Gran Turismo, Slumberland

1 watched on iTunes: All I Wish
3 watched on Amazon Prime: Shotgun Wedding, Book Club: The Next Chapter, Saltburn
1 watched on Hulu: Second Act

1 watched on Disney+: The Marvels

3 watched on a random site: The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers

30 TOTAL

I was supposed to try and take things easy in March, take some breaks and let some random days off into the mix, and 30 films in 31 days doesn't really represent that.  Case in point, I could have taken a whole week off between "The Banshees of Inisherin", and still ended up here with today's movie today.  Yeah, I didn't do that, maybe it was the best Idea but I just don't have that in me, scheduling and watching movies is one of the few things I look forward to every day, so I'm just going to keep doing that, apparently. I'll sleep when I'm dead, as they say.  Anyway if I'd done that I'd still have "Saltburn", "Gran Turismo", "The Marvels", "Aquaman 2" and "Slumberland" still outstanding, so there's that, they're all crossed off now. 

Chris O'Dowd carries over from "Slumberland".

THE PLOT: After he is threatened during a confession, a good-natured priest must battle the dark forces closing in around him. 

AFTER: Hindsight is 20/20, of course.  I put this film on Easter because "Calvary" is the name of the hill where Jesus was crucified - allegedly, because this feels like one of those things they made up during the Crusades when British kings and queens came over to the Holy Land and demanded to know where these Bible things took place, so the enterprising people of Jerusalem probably just went, "Well, what about that hill over THERE?" and so they called that particular hill Calvary and just moved forward. I certainly don't expect the good people of the year 33 A.D. to have kept proper notes, especially since they didn't know at the time that Jesus was going to be so important to people as a concept - and then there was the fall of the Roman Empire and record-keeping no doubt went to shit, so the chances of finding the RIGHT place for a thing that maybe happened centuries ago is, you know, really remote.  

But this means this might have been a better choice for Good Friday, and also Brendan Gleeson's birthday was on March 29, so yeah, maybe I could have scheduled this better - but I was in the middle of something else on Friday, so mea culpa.  Happy belated birthday, Brendan Gleeson, and Happy Easter while I'm at it. 

I really want to know more about the story behind this movie, because it's SO much like "The Banshees of Inisherin" that of course I was maybe on to something when I had the two movies RIGHT NEXT to each other in my chain.  There's more connective tissue than just both films having Brendan Gleeson in them.  They're both set in remote Irish villages that are SUPER depressing - jaisus, guys, the scenery is breathtakingly beautiful, why is everyone such a sour puss?  In both movies, everybody in town seems to hate everybody else, or at least they all gossip about each other, and by the time we get to the end of each movie, several of the characters we've come to know and tolerate are dead.  It's like they all are sitting around at the pub, just waiting for the inevitable, and sometimes they even help it along.  Note that the Irish Tourism board wants you to know that Ireland is a fun, happy place where people sing and dance and frolic across the green fields, but both of these films tell a very different tale.

"Calvary" opens with Father James hearing confession from a man who claims he was sexually abused by a priest as a child, and the abuse went on for five years, every other day.  In retaliation, the unseen confessor wants to kill a priest - not the same priest, perhaps that's impossible for him to do, so he decides he's going to kill Father James instead.  OK, so right off we know this is not going to be a very happy, positive movie.  I just realized now that this is the tie-in to the Christ story, because Christ was crucified for the sins of others (umm, everyone, so the dogma goes) and here it looks like Father James is going to be made to suffer for the sins of another priest.  

Of course, the priests talk to each other about what they heard in confession, though I think they're not supposed to - but it's a small town, so everybody sort of knows everybody and what they're all about and what they're capable of.  Father James says that he thinks he know the identity of the man who threatened to kill him, only he never says it out loud.  But as he makes his rounds through town, we realize that there's no shortage of possible suspects, everyone is screwed up and angry, for different reasons.  Father James' daughter Fiona (yes, a priest can have a daughter, if he was married before he became a priest...) comes to visit, and even she's mad at the world, she recently tried to slit her wrists, only she won't talk about the reasons why, at least not with her father, the Father. 

Jack, the town butcher has apparently hit his wife, because she's having an affair with the local car mechanic, who happens to be from Africa.  Simon, the mechanic, won't talk with Father James because he's angry about what the Catholic missionaries did to his country's people.  The other priest wants to stay out of this entire situation because he's afraid that if they side with Jack, they'll be accused of racism. 

Father James also visits Gerald, an elderly American author, to bring him supplies.  Gerald wants the priest to bring him a gun, just in case he gets so sick that he can't stand the pain any more - and surprisingly, the priest has a connection that gets him an antique gun, but I think for Gerald's own safety he never gets around to delivering it.  Then there's a wealthy banker, who's about to be investigated for financial impropriety, and he wants to make a large donation to the church, and Father James seems to be happy to receive it, only he seems to be concerned that the banker is apparently trying to either launder some ill-gotten gains, or perhaps trying to buy indulgence from his sins, using his wealth to try to acquire salvation, and that brings to mind the corruptness of the church during medieval times.  Father James would rather have the banker seek forgiveness by doing real penance, rather than buying it.

Father James also visits a man in the hospital and administers last rites, there was a drunk driving incident that injured a busload of tourists, and this one in the hospital is dying, and Father James comforts his widow.  Then it's off to the prison, where he visits Freddie Joyce, a serial killer and cannibal, who is also seeking forgiveness.  And you thought the U.S. had a lock on cannibal killers, with Jeffrey Dahmer - but just think about how much worse the food is in the U.K., and you'll maybe see why cannibalism apparently caught on there, too.  I mean, you can only eat so much bangers and mash, blood pudding and mushy peas, at least in America we have a large variety of foods from around the world, and only the most sick and/or curious people end up wondering what human flesh tastes like - in the U.K. this could be much more of an epidemic. 

After all this, somebody burns down the church, while everybody's at the pub - as if things in this town couldn't get any worse.  AND then somebody kills Father James' dog, which is something that Padraic threatend to do in "The Banshees of Inisherin", but he couldn't bring himself to do it.  Colin Farrell's character at least took the dog out of Colm's house before he burned it down.  Finally Father James can't take it any more, after his daughter leaves town he shoots up the pub with that gun he got for Gerald, and then fist-fights with the rich banker.  OK, NOW THAT'S the Ireland we all know, right?  But this town is apparently too much for even a priest to handle, the other priest quits and Father James decides to move to Dublin, only he changes his mind at the airport after seeing the coffin of the dead tourist from the bus crash.  So apparently it's back to his parish to await possible execution from one of his parishioners. It's a fine town, I suppose, but the people there need to do a lot of work on themselves. 

Now I've got to get moving, on to "Oppenheimer" in a few days, then I really have to chart a course for Mother's Day and make a decision about where this year's Documentary Block is going to go - can it fit between Mother's Day and Father's Day, or is it better between Father's Day and the Fourth of July?  More importantly, how can I avoid "Barbenheimer"?

Also starring Brendan Gleeson (last seen in "The Banshees of Inisherin"), Kelly Reilly (last seen in "The Take"), Aidan Gillen (last seen in "Bohemian Rhapsody"), Dylan Moran (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story"), Isaach de Bankolé (last seen in "The People We Hate at the Wedding"), M. Emmet Walsh (last seen in "Knives Out"), Marie-Josée Croze (last seen in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"), Domhnall Gleeson (last seen in "Never Let Me Go"), David Wilmot (last seen in "Breathe"), Pat Shortt (also last seen in "The Banshees of Inisherin"), Gary Lydon (ditto), Killian Scott (last seen in "The Commuter"), Orla O'Rourke (last seen in "The Witches"), Owen Sharpe (last seen in "My Left Foot"), David McSavage (last seen in "The Man Who Invented Christmas"), Micheál Óg Lane.

RATING: 5 out of 10 Hail Marys (and 1 Our Father)