Charge your senses with Calvary

What makes this statement even more loaded and shocking, is that the man is seeking revenge on a priest who raped and abused him as a child, and wants retribution by killing a guiltless priest, a deed the community will never forget.

Although Irish director John Michael McDonagh's film is described as a blackly comic drama, it is much darker than that, delving deep into the heart of a community and the soul of humanity.

Yes, it is humorous, with its colourful characters ranging from a caustic, agnostic, opinionated doctor to a guilt-ridden financial speculator with a 'business proposition' for the priest, to a jealous husband and a cheating boyfriend who do not wish to be judged, bringing the story to life with vivacity.

Marvellous ensemble

If there is one reason to see the film it's for the marvellous ensemble, in particular Brendan Gleeson as the good priest, delivering a performance you will always remember and which is definitely worthy of an Oscar nomination.

The film is the second written and directed by John Michael McDonagh that heads into emotionally complex and unabashedly moral territory.

The result is a wickedly droll portrait of an embattled man of the cloth (Gleeson) forced to confront modern life's volatile mixture of desire and sin, corruption and compassion, while keeping his faith alive.

As Gleeson recalls: "What must it be like to be vilified for the sins of others, as part of an organisation that you have joined, albeit with different aspirations? What intrigued us was the idea of how difficult it must be to uphold a sense of truth and a sense of goodness when you're being vilified. John said: 'If I wrote a good priest would you play him?' I said: 'Yes I would,' without hesitation."

A "who's-gonna-do-it?"

The story follows the contours of a conventional thriller, but rather than a whodunnit, McDonagh wrote a "who's-gonna-do-it?" with his inquisitive priest trying to come to terms with why a parishioner feels driven to the depths of murder, at the same time as he comes to terms with the unresolved strands of his life, his profession and his own personal search for comprehension and relevance. The kicker is that he has only seven days to do so.

"The plot's ticking clock is both a reference to Hitchcock's I Confess, and to the five stages of grief," McDonagh comments. (The stages of grief, based on the model of psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, include denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, each of which manifests in the midst of the story's murder-mystery.) And yet, the writing of Calvary is significantly outside the normal bounds of the crime genre because its main character is very much fuelled by virtue.

"It's a lot more difficult to write for a good character because the narrative drive in a thriller is usually more from the anti-heroes or villains in the story, so that was a bit tricky," admits McDonagh.

Though the eternally harsh beauty and current economic distress of Ireland might echo the story's themes, McDonagh always saw Calvary as a reflection of what is going on all around the world, transcending the charms of its locale.

"It's not a film about Ireland and Irish troubles, it's a film about everybody's troubles," the writer-director says.

An array of literary, artistic and cinematic threads

Calvary brought together an array of literary, artistic and cinematic threads in a deeply layered story in which macabre comedy is constantly dissolving into existential darkness, and vice versa.

"The humour is anarchic, dark and lacerating, à la Bunuel; the mise en scène indebted to Andrew Wyeth; the philosophy to Jean Améry; and the transcendental style inspired by Robert Bresson," remarks McDonagh.

That swirl of themes and moods would all emerge in a 29-day shoot in the starkly lyrical fishing village of Easkey in County Sligo, Ireland. There, the raw, weather-beaten landscape remains largely unchanged, but where the world of a priest such as Father James has shifted seismically.

Brendan Gleeson, who was there with McDonagh when he conceived the story (at a pub in Galway), was already a lock. Knew that this role would take him to places he'd never before been, as he contemplated the full contours of the seemingly honourable, yet mortally endangered, Father James.

The last of a dying tribe

Father James seems to be almost the last of a dying tribe, a man defiantly out of sync with our cynical times, which made him utterly compelling to Gleeson.

"The story is about the notion of goodness," says the actor. "We're in a very strange time, when it's difficult for people to believe in heroes any more. I play a lot of anti-heroes and that's easy to do when disillusionment has set in. But I believe we're swimming against the tide with Calvary. It's kind of revolutionary now to think of goodness as an aspiration."

He was drawn to Father James as a man who genuinely believes in being good, but not in order to avoid being bad in some bland, benign way; rather, Father James aims at decency and humility because it is the most uncompromising, even courageous choice when surrounded by corruption and earned mistrust.

The toxic poison of cynicism

"As we were making the film, the notion of this man suffering for other people's sins somehow became very real to me," Gleeson reflects. "It was almost as if I was some kind of syringe, sucking the toxic poison of cynicism out of people. Day by day, scene by scene, it was remorseless. I was supposed to be the good fellow who has all the answers. The priest is supposed to be a beacon of hope. But I did find it very difficult emotionally."

He continues: "When you are playing a character that is constantly under emotional assault, you also have to be in that place. It was a very intense shoot; a short, intense shoot. It could be relentless, absorbing all that contempt and hate and poison - and you begin to understand, in a personal way, the notion of Calvary," he continues, referencing the film's title, based on the locale of the crucifixion, and a word that has come to mean any experience of intense mental questioning or transformation through anguish.

Calvary is most definitely one of the top films of the year, a meaningful and rewarding cinematic experience that takes you into a world and story that will remain with you long after you leave the cinema.

Read more about this film and other new films opening this week at www.writingstudio.co.za.