Calvary

 I have made the point before that watching a film can be something akin to a religious experience. A well-behaved cinema audience sits in a darkened space waiting for the coming of the light of inspiration, but sadly Pearl and Dean adverts come on instead, which as spiritual experiences go is like sitting through the long, rambling notices in church. 'You'll be happy to know that all the leaks in the church roof have been repaired but I'm afraid you'll still have to put up with the drip in the pulpit.'  'Tonight's service is on 'what is hell?' Come early and hear our choir practice.' Your mind wanders, you drift, you fidget, you're partly somewhere else and you hope the notices / adverts don't go on too long.

Eventually the steward stops talking and the service begins. You pick up your popcorn because in this blog we can change from church to cinema as instantly as an onscreen scene change and munch your way through the sermon.

I've never been a big fan of religious epics, the type where God and Moses are played by Charlton Heston or Burt Lancaster though I do like the story about John Wayne who was miscast as the centurion at the foot of the cross in The Greatest Story Ever Told. He only had one line – 'Surely this man is the Son of God,' but he delivered it as flatly as a man ordering pizza immediately after a three course meal. 'We need more awe, Duke,' the exasperated director explained and almost inevitably when the cameras rolled again Wayne said, 'Aw, truly this man is the Son of God.'

 I tend to like smaller scale films but I am aware that in depicting clergy, filmmakers are prone to playing it for laughs or portraying them as psychopaths. Who can forget Robert Mitchum's unhinged wandering preacher in Night of the Hunter? Thus I am happy to report that Calvary, the new film from John Michael McDonagh, takes religion seriously and portrays the practice of religion with a dignity that is moving and memorable.

Brendan Gleeson is Father James Lavelle, a Roman Catholic priest whose beliefs and attitude towards religion are not defined entirely by the church to which he belongs. He has had a life before priesthood. He has been married and has a grown up daughter. He is a man with a calling but it's his calling and he does it his way. In a very dramatic opening a man who was abused by a priest as a child says he is going to kill a good priest to make a point and that priest will be father James Lavelle and it will happen on 'Sunday week.' The rest of the film portrays Father Lavelle continuing his ministry over several days with this hanging over him. We see people treating him with a certain amount of contempt and hostility, denying him his dignity and losing their own in the process. It's a sad reminder of the strong streak of anti-religious sentiment that has built up over recent decades.

However we also see father Lavelle upholding and affirming those around him, even ultimately, the person who intends to kill him. At one point we see him sharing in the ritual of prayer with a bereaved woman. The words don't matter but that shared experience of prayer does. We see him sharing in the fragility of breakdown, sacrificing himself for a community that in so many ways does not seem to want to know him. The New Testament parallels are obvious and yet largely missing from the reviews I've read.

Calvary is my favourite film of the year so far and has triggered questions that still resonate several weeks later. Self-sacrifice makes for great drama but how central should it be to our understanding of faith and can it be taken too far? How can religious groups respond effectively to anti-religious sentiment? When belief is not enough, to what extent can ritual fill the gap? Late on a Sunday night, I don't propose to answer any of these questions but if you have any thoughts, please post them.

On mobile device see the clip here