REVIEW: Calvary (2014)

Calvary is the second feature film from John Michael McDonagh, following on from the very successful The Guard. Unlike his brother Martin’s second feature, the messy, dated Seven Psychopaths, John Michael has followed his funny (though somewhat flimsy) first film with a darker, much more bold tale of the clash between faith and doubt in modern-day Ireland. Calvary is interesting for its contemporary significance but disappointing for its lack of originality.

Father James (Brendan Gleeson) is threatened by an unknown man in his confession box – the man claims that he will kill James in one week, not because he is a bad priest, but because he is a good priest and that would make it more noteworthy. Over the next week, James continues with his job, offering his services in a town full of doubt and anger. Practically everyone in the town (including Chris O’Dowd, Dylan Moran, Orla O’Rourke, Killian Scott, Aidan Gillen, Pat Shortt, M. Emmet Walsh and Isaach de Bankolé) has lost their faith, actively hates the Catholic Church for their crimes and resents Father James for his confidence and integrity. Father James’ daughter Fiona (Kelly Reilly) also returns from London with her own problems.

The first thing to know about Calvary is that, despite its marketing, its casting and the McDonagh brand, it is not a comedy. This is not to say that it is unfunny, since there are a few laughs scattered throughout, but that it is a dark morality tale with some jokes thrown in to, as McDonagh calls it, sugar the pill – more on this later. Calvary is instead a film about a post-Church Ireland, a country of, as the film suggests, lost people who still need their Church but who can no longer trust it. The figure of the priest is no longer a trusted figure, more an anachronistic and slightly suspicious one. Father James is one of the good ones – a compassionate and committed man who feels that he has a valuable role to play even if no one else seems to agree. There is a great scene towards the end of the film in which Father James, about to flee for Dublin, spots two airline baggage carriers leaning casually on a coffin unaware that the dead man’s wife is in view. Father James’ decision is conveyed without words, only Gleeson’s facial expression (in what is overall a fantastic performance) reveals what Father James is thinking – that there is still a place in Ireland for someone willing to preach about compassion and about caring for one another. This being a McDonagh film, however, things are not quite so schematic – Father James is a man of integrity but he is not entirely pure and the other people in the town often do have genuine criticisms. Lynch (Shortt) wonders why he never criticised the actions of the bankers from his pulpit, while Jack (O’Dowd) criticises his emotional remove from stories of Catholic abuse. One great scene late in the film in which Father James comes across a young girl on holiday on a lonely road may even force you to question how much you trust him. Calvary then is an interesting film about the state of the Church in Ireland today, a rare film that reveals the value of such an institution while also starkly revealing many of its inadequacies.

That said, the film is powerfully redundant, wearing its influences much too clearly on its sleeve. The films of Robert Bresson are clearly evoked, with many of the elements, ideas and characters lifted from Diary of a Country Priest and a final scene taken entirely from Pickpocket – albeit via American Gigolo in its use of a modern prison visiting room. The film’s own gigolo character, Leo (Owen Sharpe), endlessly impersonates James Cagney for no apparent reason and the set-up recalls High Noon. Meanwhile, the drama escalates exactly like Vinterberg’s The Hunt and John Michael McDonagh lifts several identical shots, sequences and lines of dialogue, actors and characters from his own unenlightening 2000 short The Second Death. As in The Guard, the only two characters who seem to understand Gleeson’s character is a young boy played by Michael Og Lane and a recently bereaved widow (this time played by Marie-Josée Croze). The film is also way too self-aware, with talk of ‘startling opening lines’, ‘third act revelations’ and Gillen’s atheist doctor all too aware that he is the ‘clichéd character’ with not many ‘good lines.’ For all the seriousness of its themes and the honesty in their treatment – the film does after all have the courage of its convictions and it does not cheat – it ends up feeling much too indebted to other films.

The other problem with Calvary, particularly if it reminds one of the films of Bresson, is that it lacks the rigour of those films. McDonagh casts actors known for comedy and allows them to play eccentric characters and awkwardly included jokes to sweeten the pill. In a way, then, the film is slightly restrained, as if McDonagh is afraid of making it too dark, too disturbing. It would suggest that McDonagh likes the ideas of other filmmakers but is afraid of their conclusions, their unabashed intellectualism and their often strictly spare aesthetics. McDonagh photographs Gleeson dressed as a priest standing head bowed in front of a cross on a bare white wall, but it seems to be only a gesture, a stylistic nod to another filmmaker rather than anything particularly significant to the film at hand. And for all of McDonagh’s talk of Bresson’s transcendental style, he seems to feel the need to puncture similarly redemptive and spiritual moments with emotive score and floating camerawork. You are left wondering how sincere a film is Calvary. Did McDonagh start with his themes or did he self-consciously set out to make a ‘masterpiece’? Is Calvary then inspired by the questions and themes of Pickpocket or is it just inspired by its acclaim?

Calvary is, at heart, a modern, and more specifically Irish, retelling of Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest but told via Quentin Tarantino’s somewhat vacuous style of surface imitation. Calvary is a bold and interesting film but it is often hard to tell how many of his own ideas McDonagh is really using – and of those how many were lifted from The Second Death and The Guard. Calvary is an interesting mood piece and a fascinating examination of the state of the Church and of faith in Ireland today, but it really needs some of its own ideas.

REVIEW: Mister John (2013)

From directors Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, Mister John follows Gerry Devine (Aidan Gillen) as he travels to Singapore following the death of his brother John (Michael Walsh) by drowning. John had owned a nightclub called ‘Mister John’ and had a local wife and daughter (Zoe Tay and Ashleigh Judith White respectively). As Gerry remains in Singapore, partly for his brother’s funeral and partly to escape a traumatic argument with his wife (Claire Keelan) at home, Gerry begins to take on some of the characteristics of his brother.

Mister John is a film primarily about identities becoming confused and merging with each other. Initially, Gerry is something of a non-person. As the film unfolds, we find out more about him and about his brother’s life in Singapore. Gerry seems to become confused about whether to retain his own identity or whether the best thing for him to do would be to take his brother’s place. This is made explicit many, many times; we see Gerry putting on John’s clothes after his own are lost in the airport (the exchange of clothes representing the exchange of personalities is an art house cliché – Antonioni, a clear influence here, made it a trademark: see L’Avventura and The Passenger), dreaming about owning a nightclub called ‘Mister Gerry.’ It is also suggested more implicitly by Gerry’s apparent lack of a clear past and his often surprising and unexpected actions. Similarly, the film has a few lurches in tone and style, as if the impulse towards more traditional film aesthetics, like Gerry’s fascination with the space left by John, sometimes proves irresistible. However, the film’s own fascination with liminal states leads to a rather stolid, forced and unlikeable film.

Mister John is so self-consciously minimalist that it is almost self-defeating. It is intentional slow and vague and oftentimes the camera will go for a wander, with our without a character to give the shots context, as if it is not sure what it should film next. This is all justified thematically, but these lengthy diversions merely suggest that the ideas presented here are not complex enough to hang a feature length film on. Although clearly an unfair comparison, yet one that remains somewhat illuminating, La Jetée addresses similar ideas with much more complexity and ingenuity in less than half an hour. With 95 minutes to kill, Molloy and Lawlor allow their film to become irritatingly repetitive. A doctor warns Gerry “he will not be himself” following an illness, a warning that is later repeated in case you missed the double meaning. They also allow the film to become very sluggish in a way that recalls ‘slow cinema’ without matching, again, the complexity of other films. Essentially, Mister John is about a man reassessing his life after he is suddenly offered the chance to take on another identity. The film shows Gerry facing a variety of dilemmas – quite a few sexually available prostitutes (again, repetition), a lucrative but immoral business and a man who owes him money – in order to see whether it will be Gerry or ‘John’ who reacts to each stimulus. It is left to one’s own interpretation if Gerry’s choices are the result of the vagaries of Gerry’s own moral outlook or if they are the result of a fluid personality. Shrug.

The film is also rather uncomfortably recalls Edward W Said’s brand of Orientalism in its depiction of Singapore, full of heady mystical exoticism that is just too much for a simple Westerner. Is Mister John also a fable of a stranger in a strange land questioning the West’s conception of the East? An examination of the post-colonial world in which exploitation is still present? John’s nightclub is clearly dubious though sexual exploitation is only hinted at, the filmmakers clearly not too interested in this angle to give it the full Ulrich Seidl-style examination it deserves. It seems that all this, when placed alongside the film’s dogged questioning of identity and morality, unlike for Chris Marker’s other classic, San Soleil, is just a step too far. In reality, Mister John gestures at ideas without addressing any of them, making points only by vague suggestion and, ultimately, not really sure what its conclusions are. The film, hence, has more to do with political speeches than with art – it talks but it doesn’t say anything.

Mister John is hard, if not impossible to like since every character is left unknowable and somehow impure, the storyline is left intentionally vague and the editing is very slow-paced. But although the film’s self-questioning nature offers justification for the above, the film itself is not particularly interesting and the actors are not given much room to impress. Instead, it is a very cold, cerebral and rambling film, one that replicates the devices and aesthetics of certain strands of 1960s art cinema, particularly Antonioni and, to a degree, Bresson, with not quite enough depth. Ultimately, there is very little to get out of Mister John.

REVIEW: Wake Wood (2011)

  Wake Wood is the latest film to be credited with the Hammer name. Filmed in Pettigoe, the film has a distinctly homegrown feel, which is a pleasant change of pace from the more American The Resident. Given a shamelessly limited cinematic release, the film will be available on DVD from Monday, but the film works best on the big screen.

  Patrick and Louise (Aiden Gillen and Eva Birthistle) are a married couple with a young daughter Alice, played very well by newcomer Ella Connolly. One day, their daughter is killed in a horrible accident. Still grieving some time later, they move into the rural village of Wake Wood. It’s not long before they stumble upon a pagan ritual that is practised by the townsfolk. As Patrick’s new boss Arthur (Timothy Spall) explains, in Wake Wood, they practise a rite, which can bring their daughter back to life over three days so that they can have a proper goodbye. However, there are some very strict rules, which must be obeyed. When Patrick and Louise deviate from them, bad things happen.

  Wake Wood comes with a lot of allusions. First of all, the most obvious are two films from a 1973 double feature, The Wicker Man and Don’t Look Now. The ritual itself recalls one of the best Hammer years of yesteryear, Dracula, Prince of Darkness. However, one thing that is most important about Wake Wood, as with The Resident (though obviously to a lesser extent)¸ is that the film curbs any tendencies to hark back to its roots, delivering instead something that is refreshingly original.

  Ultimately, the film succeeds on the strength of its concept, one that is rich in possibilities and one that is genuinely nerve-racking, especially because you don’t know what is going to happen and what road the film will go down. As well as this, the performances are well played with Gillen and Birthistle’s grieving parents being both moving and convincing. You do believe that a couple like them would want to participate in such a rite. Equally good is Timothy Spall, playing the lead pagan and managing to be both sinister and likable.

  However, these qualities become secondary to the film’s real bonus. Wake Wood manages to be a modern horror film that is actually scary. It is extremely tense and foreboding. When it gets into full swing, you will dread each new scene. Though it uses a lot of gore, it is the quiet scenes and the sequences involving ideas, which are the most effective. None the less, it is a fragile film that demands a big screen, a high volume and your complete and undivided attention. As well as this, it is a horror film for adults, the kind of thing that is rarely, if ever, made these days. Plus, it is shot in Pettigoe.

  An unsure ending notwithstanding, Wake Wood is a gem of a film, a little low-budget horror film that is actually scary and is also emotionally involving. Littered with fine performances, a convincing locale and a great concept, Wake Wood is a film that deserves a wide release and a big following. Try your best to see it in the cinema.