I like films that make me think (as well as ones when I don’t have to think at all…!) Last night I watched the 2014 film ‘Calvary’, wondering whether this would be yet another film which lambasted the Catholic church over paedophile priests and denigrated faith.
The film is not easy to watch in parts and does indeed deal with difficult situations, including sexual abuse, drug-taking, violence and attempted suicide. But it portrays these things not simply to criticise God or the church, but to show us a fallen world and how people grapple with suffering and pain. Brendan Gleeson plays an innocent man, a good priest, in the aftermath of Ireland’s devastating sex abuse scandal. ‘A late vocation, a widower with a troubled adult daughter, he’s surrounded by people he knows better than they know themselves, characters ripe with indifference, resentment and cynicism, sprinkled with just enough courtesy to mask their contempt,’ Archbishop Charles Caput writes. The film begins in the confessional, when a man, the victim of clergy rape as a child, tells the priest that he will murder him in a week’s time, not because he is a bad priest, but precisely because he is a good priest, and to kill a good priest might shock the church into considering the effects of sexual abuse.
The rest of the film charts the priest’s day-by-day life for the rest of that week, showing us how he deals with his parishioners, all of whom are deeply troubled and scarred individuals, as well as with his daughter, who has not coped well with the death of her mother and her father’s ‘abandonment’ to a religious vocation. There are no magic cures, no happy endings, no ‘perfect’ priest, but along with the darkness are moments of true faith: the priest’s kindness to an ageing writer friend; his love for his daughter; his humour and positive relationship with a young altar server; his sensitivity in dealing with a young French woman, widowed in a car accident while on holiday in Ireland. Far from giving us a black and white film about right and wrong, the grey areas of faith are discussed and in a telephone conversation between the priest and his daughter filled with mercy, reconciliation and forgiveness, we see the hope that God can bring even into desperate situations.
Faith is lived out in far from ideal conditions by people who are far from perfect. A recovering alcoholic, the priest does not always cope well with the pressures upon him and is by no means sinless. He is, however, portrayed as a men of integrity who believes that there is “too much talk of sins and not enough of virtues.” In offering forgiveness and hope even to those who would despise and reject him, he reminds us of a Saviour who ‘when they hurled their insults at him, did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.’ (1 Pet 2:23) Food for thought indeed.