Calvary (McDonagh, 2014)
Today’s update involves a machine-transcription of one of the early Rancho Notorious podcasts from 2014 so apologies for a lack of polish.
This episode of Rancho Notorious featured guest hosts – and current subscribers to this newsletter – Sarah Watt and Doug Dillaman. Sarah is currently film reviewer at the NZ Listener and Doug is a filmmaker (Gut Instinct) and commentator. As well as Calvary and the usual mailbag and news features, I interviewed Dan Barrett from Wētā Digital about their work on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.
Calvary is one of the greatest films ever about faith and forgiveness, and it’s anchored by a totemic performance from one of the greatest to ever do it, Brendan Gleeson. From memory, I had to be mopped up off the floor of the theatre at the end of the screening.
Gleeson plays a parish priest in an Irish village who is told during confession that this particular parishioner had been abused by a Catholic priest but – because that perpetrator was now dead – he is going to take his retribution against Gleeson’s character instead and gives him a week to get his life in order.
As the week unfolds, we meet the rest of the village, all of whom have a complicated relationship with the church and with Gleeson’s character.
Sarah: Let’s be clear. This is not, I think, and this is not a spoiler, but what’s surprising, of course, is he’s not trying to figure out who’s going to do him in so that he can stop it happening. He has a real sense of, well, what will be, doesn’t he? He’s very much like… Up to a …
Dan: … point. Up to a point. There is a moment where he tries to escape his fate. And he realizes before it’s too late that actually he has to face up to certain things. Not for him personally, although I think that there’s an element of his own personal history that he feels a need to atone for, but because he feels as if he has been chosen to take on the burden of everybody.
It’s almost as if this one piece of information provokes him to go and find out more about the people he shares his community with. And the more he learns about that community, the more he comes to learn that they need him and yet they don’t want him. And that fact alone is enough for him to decide the path that he’s going to take.
Sarah didn’t like Calvary as much as I did.
Sarah: Now, not only did I feel personally like that that was McDonough going into shock – shock language – territory to be ghastly, but there were members of my audience who tittered because it makes us uncomfortable and because it was shocking.
And I thought, actually, if anything, you have gone too far. you have become gratuitous. This is just my view there and after all he does is roll out this litany of characters from the village who are all horrible. With the exception of the French widow, the daughter and father what’s his name, everyone was ghastly. They are ghastly but …
Dan: … they are all damaged. They were not born ghastly.
…
Dan: Everybody in the film is angry. And they’re angry at their politicians, their leaders. They’re angry at the state of the economy. They’re angry at society. Everybody is angry at the way their lives have turned out. And at the one moment in anybody’s life where the church should be able to provide some succor, that the church should be able to provide some sustenance, some guidance, the church has absolutely queered their own pitch so appallingly that nobody trusts them.
Nobody will take any notice of them. And it’s like the church has let everybody down and they need them desperately.
It was a good debate (and I’m giving myself the last word). I miss podcasting.
Where to watch Calvary
Aotearoa: Streaming on Beamafilm (free with participating library membership) or digital rental from AroVision
Australia: Streaming on Beamafilm (free with participating library membership), FoxTelNow or Stan
Canada: Digital rental
Ireland & UK: Streaming on NowTV
India: Not currently available
USA: Digital rental
