Calvary (2014): 8/10
Its reconfiguration of the Christ story is too obvious, most of its characters are caricatures, and the script lacks any semblance of subtlety--but it works. It works in part because of Brendan Gleeson's remarkable performance. Gleeson has one of the best faces in the world--and his control over it is extraordinary. The director (John McDonagh, brother of Martin McDonagh, whose film In Bruges Gleeson also graced with a towering performance) was lucky to have Gleeson, and smart to almost always show him in all-black, so that we are drawn to his face, hovering above the void. It also works in part because it dances that fine, dangerous line between tragedy and comedy, and dances it not with grace, but with drunken swagger. But mostly it works because of its great cumulative effect. This film is essentially a parade of one ridiculous scene after another, but the more it piles on the more the earlier scenes work, and the bigger picture is revealed to be much bigger than we might have originally thought. It also possesses a forceful way of making old problems feel new again. And no, I'm not just talking about the Church's awful history of abuse and rape, though certainly that rears its head here, and does so with, forgive me, a vengeance. It was in its exploration of sin and forgiveness that it struck the strongest chord with me--particularly in one scene, where a serial murderer expresses his desire to meet in heaven with the women he murdered on earth, and to love them there as he couldn't love them here. This will happen, you see, because he's penitent, and he believes that he can inspire God's forgiveness. God created him--God must understand him, mustn't he? I found this man's notion of heaven to be stomach churning--but Gleeson's priest had to seriously consider it, and has to (seemingly daily) consider this sharp divide between human morality and divine morality that lead so many to reinforced faith, and so many away from it. All of the film's questioning and blunt-force trauma comes to a head when he's asked a simple question--whether or not he cried for the victims of Church rape and abuse, when such knowledge became widespread. Well. Did you?
