A Promising Idea That Falls Apart

There are two stars of “Calvary,” writer-director John Michael McDonagh’s ambitious new film: Brendan Gleeson and the spectacular scenery of Ireland’s northwest coast. Gleeson is a big man, whose roles have included Mad-Eye Moody in all the Harry Potter films and, most memorably, Ken in Martin McDonagh’s (yes, John Michael’s famous playwright brother) wonderful film, “In Bruges.” He was an older, quieter hitman trying to keep his junior partner, a frenetic, fast-talking Colin Farrell, in check. In all Gleeson’s films he seems grounded, solid, ready to absorb the vagaries of the world and the people around him. Which is a good thing in “Calvary.” Gleeson plays Father James Lavalle, a priest in a rural parish in County Sligo. An opening aerial shot shows us the green land with the Atlantic breaking on the wind-swept coast dominated by the gigantic stone mass of Ben Bulben, made famous by W. B. Yeats in a poem, one of his last, about death, that ends with “Horseman, pass by!” From the stunning view of Ben Bulben, McDonagh takes us to the first, and by far the best, scene in the film. Father James sits in the confessional and hears the complaint of a parishioner who says, in blunt and searing words, that he was abused as a young boy by a pedophile priest, that he has suffered continuous torments and that he has decided by killing a “good priest,” his vengeance will get more publicity and make a stronger statement. So he will kill Father James on the beach in seven days. Ah, you say, what a great beginning. Here we are faced with the awful result of the moral shortcoming of an institution that literally ran Ireland for decades and a who-will-be-the-killer mystery as well. Father James’s reaction is like Christ, resigned to his fate. He goes about his parish duties while trying to determine who his putative murderer is. But as he does, the movie falls apart. Each succeeding day is announced with an on-screen text that, I suppose, is meant to build suspense. Instead it just means another character, or caricature, in Father James’s flock will be introduced. There’s a butcher (Chris O’Dowd, lately on Broadway in “Of Mice and Men), who probably beats up his wife, Veronica (Orla O’Rourke), who is having an affair with a mechanic, Simon (Issach de Bankole). Then there is a coke-snorting surgeon, Frank (Aidan Gillen); a dying writer, Gerald (M. Emmet Walsh, quite wonderful) and a rich, grotesque banker, Michael (Dylan Moran). Oh, and there is Father James’s daughter. He was married once and entered the priesthood after his wife’s death without realizing his daughter, Fiona (Kelly Reilly), felt abandoned. But he does finally realize it when she arrives with bandaged wrists from her latest suicide attempt. Their scenes together are tender, a bit sentimental and belong in another kind of Irish film. As hard as he tries, McDonagh cannot make these characters plausible. Except for Father James, they all seem to represent facets of recent Irish social and economic history or personal traits rather than fully rounded people. And they talk and talk; sometimes the film is more a dialectic than screenplay. Perhaps that is why McDonagh and his cameraman, Larry Smith, return so often to the fierce drama of the Sligo scenery. However there is always Gleeson. Sometimes you just go to a movie for the joy of watching a single masterful performance, and Gleeson gives it. As he strides onto the beach near the end — alas, there is a later coda, a sort of summing up, that is so silly it strains all credulity — he is magnificent: a man who has come to terms with his fate, who is willing to die for the burden the Church he believes in has placed on his shoulders. “Calvary” is playing widely. Rated R for sex, language, violence, drugs.