Review of the movie Calvary. About Christianity in Irish
Irish cinema, like Irish literature, occupies a special niche in world culture in general. Where all the other hints, equivocations, postures and stiffness have it, the Irish, without pretentiousness, dot the `` i '' and generously sprinkle everything with a specific black humor. Therefore, even a tense biblical drama, although placed in the scenery of the 3rd millennium, in the interpretation of the Irish looks not as a moralizing Sunday service, but as a wise revelation and an ironic thriller. History , narrated by John Michael McDonagh, could have been shocking if it had not been presented with such worldly simplicity and boundless irony, turning into sarcasm. Provincial Irish priest, Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson), a man of rare kindness and patience, a humanist by vocation, is going to kill one of the parishioners, for example X, who suffered from pedophile priests in childhood. About which X warns Father James in advance at confession without absolution and gives a week of time to put things in order. His offender has long been dead, but the pain and anger still do not subside and cry for revenge, and revenge will be all the more complete and will bring the more balance to the world, as it develops in his inflamed brain, the cleaner and more sinless its object will be. Father James accepts this challenge of fate firmly and calmly as his cross. And so we make a slow week-long ascent to Calvary together with Brendan Gleason, who is so unsurpassedly magnificent, delicate, wise, passionate, powerful, inexhaustible like the elements, full of self-irony, that if their message together with John Michael McDonagh will not touch the viewer, then humanity can be considered hopeless. The movie has already won the Ecumenical (Christian) Jury Prize at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival. In connection with Calvary many remembered Robert Bresson's French tape `` Diary of a Country Priest '' (1950) with a similar plot. Another movie of 2003 comes to mind, albeit made in a mystical vein and on a slightly different theme — " sin eater " Brian Helgelend, on mysterious individuals belonging to a certain order, literally `` absorbing '' through a complex ritual sins of those departing to another world, cleansing their souls and the whole world from filth. The Death Eaters were Peter Weller and his successor father Alex Bernier — Heath Ledger. Father James Lavelle is also a `` devourer '', only without any mysticism. During the week given to him, he talks with the flock, consisting of some of the ridiculous and narrow-minded, some of the dangerous and cynical freaks who manage to feed him with the terrible poison of their secrets from the bottom of the soul, testing his angelic patience and boundless abilities of forgiveness. He gives attention and sympathy to everyone in the hope that people are not hopeless. He manages to communicate with his daughter (Kelly Reilly), who has long lived her not infallible life in Dublin and came to lick her wounds for a while, but by the end she turns out to be the true daughter of her father. Debates with fellow clergymen — as it should be assumed, people are far from asceticism. And it is affirmed that that too frequent sermons about sin in the absence of talks about virtue and just love do not bring humanity closer to the ideal. It is impossible to imagine anyone else in the place of Brendan Gleason, he is like the foundation of things, as unshakable a rock, on the firmament of which any storms break - — a powerful red-haired stubborn Irishman and at the same time a patient humanist. But his flock is also unique — writer, butcher, millionaire, doctor, African immigrant, unfaithful wife, servant boy — all skeptics and nihilists: Chris O'Dowd, Aiden Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaac De Bankole, M. Emmet Walsh. They are somewhat reminiscent of the eccentric assholes from the movie Seven Psychopaths, directed by Martin McDonagh, brother of J.M. McDon. And if you add to `` Calvary '' and `` Psychopaths '' two more crime movies from the McDon brothers 'Once Upon a Time in Ireland' and Go Down in Bruges, it turns out to be a cool modern Irish saga. With all the references to the Bible, the picture is far from the movie adaptations of biblical stories. This is a serious, but far from insipid, philosophical reflection on modern humanity and its moral values, full of love and compassion for each individually and calling for the best in us. The Topic of Article: Review of the movie Calvary. About Christianity in Irish. |
