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: Life's A Breeze (2013)

Life’s A Breeze is a return to homegrown cinema for Lance Daly (Last Days in Dublin, The Halo Effect and Kisses) following the disappointing release of The Good Doctor. Life’s A Breeze is much safer territory, it being a family comedy with Pat Shortt, but there is something of more interest lurking under the film’s surface.

Fionnula Flanagan (Ulysses, Some Mother’s Son, Man About Dog, The Guard) plays the matriarch to a large family who are all feeling the toll of the economic crisis. Her useless son Colm (Shortt – This Is My Father, The Closer You Get, Saltwater, Wild About Harry, Mapmaker, Man About Dog, Inside I’m Dancing, Garage, The Guard) lives with her and begrudgingly signs on every week. When her children unexpectedly tidy up her house for her, a large sum of money is unknowingly dumped and the family must come together to track it down.

As a yarn, the film is slightly inept, not as funny as it should be and overlong. It is more interesting, and successful, as a comment on the Celtic Tiger generation. In fact, a lot of what doesn’t add up initially starts to make sense when one thinks of it as a satire. For example, it is clear that the family is short of money, but an extended sequence in which they show Nan (Flanagan) around the house, pointing out all of the expensive changes they have made, showing that they are spending it anyway. This doesn’t add up and is very distracting, until later on when one begins to pick up on the fact that the film is possibly more than just a silly comedy. Hence, it is a comment on people spending money they don’t have – a scenario the film will revisit a few more times – and, hence, by extension, a comment on Ireland’s, and the world’s, economic collapse.

The film is mainly about the developing relationship between Nan (Flanagan) and her grandmother Emma (Kelly Thornton, her debut), their connection due, as is often suggested by inference, to the fact that one predates and the other comes after the Celtic Tiger. All of Nan’s children have been effected by the Celtic Tiger, scarred by a brief period of wealth, they are constantly spending money that they don’t have and, at the prospect of a large sum of money coming their way, are frequently seen arguing over their share of their inheritance. Nan is clearly contemptuous of their generation and, as one of the final shots makes explicit, does not fit in with her own family. Emma, on the other hand, represents a hope for Ireland, since she is young, uncorrupted and used to scrimping and saving. A final image of Emma, almost like in The Searchers, leaving the house and watching the traffic jam outside is eloquent of possibility for her as much as it is the mediocrity of everyday existence chasing after money.

Daly, who also wrote the script, layers in a variety of reflections of modern-day post-crash Ireland, which comment on and frequently deflate the light comedy of the story. Life’s A Breeze is a deceptively light film, revealing much darker truths though not always as well as it might. At one point, Emma finds herself wandering around a large abandoned building in which homeless people are living in horrible conditions. The pacing is slow, taking in every detail but it is also tense, as if Emma is going to be attacked at any minute. It is a moving sequence and an important one – for a film that mocks the Celtic Tiger generation should be open to be the real damage that has been done. And yet, it is really quite damaging to the film overall. As valid as this sequence is, it is unclear whether it is supposed to be sad and threatening and, much worse, when the happy, light entertainment returns, it seems distractingly hollow and forced. Daly may well be commenting on the emotional volte-face that we are all capable of doing after seeing some form of economic hardship on our streets – a reading that makes the film a lot more interesting and worth a second viewing – but it feels more like a political comment stymied by the film’s need to tell a satisfying yarn.

For every environmental-scare scene – the destruction of the land to make huge landfills – there is a tacky scene in which Nan and Emma have a laugh, whilst on a landfill. It is entirely possible that Life’s A Breeze is a thoroughly ironic and accusatory film disguised as a Pat Shortt comedy (in keeping then with Garage and The Guard, in which Shortt is cast as either a dramatic or comedic comment on his otherwise rather grating persona) but this subversion is jarring rather than revealing.

Life’s A Breeze may prove to be more interesting on a second viewing, when one may expect and look out for the subversions that may or may not be present. It is a difficult film to judge since its deficiencies, as a light comedy may instead be a means of expressing the absurdity of life and the corruption of the Celtic Tiger. However, by turning a film’s flaws into virtues, one wonders if one isn’t making more of the film than is really there. Life’s A Breeze is certainly interesting but it feels like a stretch to consider its fluctuations between light comedy and grim Loachian drama an important comment on our own ability to ignore the problems of people around us and, by extension, a comment on a film’s ability to distract us from these problems. Life’s A Breeze is either rather poor or it is a surprisingly self-aware and important film – one of those strange gems in which the truth, one suspects, lies somewhere between design and dumb luck.