The Catholic church hasn't been the most popular of late. As more and more evidence of its countless covered-up incidents of child abuse has been revealed, the church has found itself at the ire of much of the world. I think one of the reasons I love Calvary so much is that it has the stones to stand bravely in front of the angry mob in defence. Father Lavelle theorises in one of the film's later scenes that people spend too much time focusing on sin, and not enough on virtues, going on to cite forgiveness as a particularly underrated quality, which stems from the film's central idea that spirituality and faith have never been the problem. Organisation of them has. Father Lavelle certainly isn't a perfect man. His daughter's attempted suicide stemmed from his abandonment of her following the death of his wife/her mother. During a conversation with a boy considering joining the army, he puts forth his belief that joining the army during peace time is psychopathic, and the action only of someone who wants to know what it's like to kill someone. Putting aside the fact that the boy is considering joining the army to quell his violent thoughts towards the women who reject him, this is a powerfully judgmental attitude for a man whose career is built upon leaving judgement to the big guy in the sky. But in the end, he's just another flawed human trying to do his best in a world that wants to see him suffer like it suffers. The film begins with him receiving the knowledge that he will be dead in seven days. He's pretty sure he knows who it was on the other side of the confessional booth, but that doesn't stop him from conducting his regular business of wandering through his small Northern Island community desperately trying to fix the broken lives surrounding him. And while these pathetic miscreants need his help, they refuse to show it. A pleasant conversation with a young girl is interrupted by her father, horrified that her daughter found herself alone with a priest. Because he's seen the news. He knows what every priest is up to. But it wasn't Father Lavelle who shipped priests out to the missions after they were caught touching children. It was the church. The same church that Father Lavelle goes to in order to seek guidance about his would-be assailant, that bogs him down in the politics and nuances on the confidentiality of a confessional. The same church that provides him with an assistant that understands nothing of the people in the community and strikes like a rattlesnake at the first sign of a rich man offering them money. In a drunken stupor, Father Lavelle asks him why he's even a priest. The next morning, his assistant is heading back to the city and says he didn't realise he hated him so much. "I don't hate you at all," he replies. "It's just you have no integrity. And that's the worst thing I could say about anybody." Notice he didn't say faith, or belief. Almost as if God, or what God represents, is what comes after you've sorted out becoming a decent human being.
The thing is, Father Lavelle never explicitly states during the film that he even still has faith in God. He could be forgiven for not. Calvary takes place in modern-day Ireland, a country in a deep financial crisis. The people Father Lavelle spends most of his time with are the people most affected by this recession: those that can't leave. It's through these people that we run a gamut of caricatures representative of an entire disenfranchised people. There's the married man who accepts and encourages his wife's unfaithfulness because it's the only way they can remain happy, who happily plays a game of chess with the man his wife is sleeping with. There's the atheist doctor who questions Father Lavelle's faith by telling him the story of one of his patients: a young girl whose surgery was botched, who woke up deaf, dumb, blind and paralysed - unable to scream, as he puts it. There's the American author who wants to kill himself before old age robs him of dignity. There's the homosexual rent boy who tries to make others uncomfortable to hide his own insecurities. There's the young man serving a life sentence in prison who is desperate for forgiveness not from remorse, but fear in what death brings. And so on. One of them is the aforementioned victim of sexual abuse with a gun in his hand, but in reality, they've all been raped by their country and the faceless ones that run it. Even the one person in the community that is able to leave isn't really able to escape. Michael Fitzgerald (Dylan Moran) seems to be embroiled in the series of banking scandals that accompanies Ireland's financial woes, but he knows he's going to come through it relatively unscathed, because why wouldn't a rich man get off scot free? This prompts Father Lavelle to ask why he's bothered to call upon him if he doesn't feel guilty. "I don't feel guilty," Michael replies. "But I feel like I should. Same thing, isn't it?" And then he pisses on a priceless painting in front of Father Lavelle just to show that he can. That's a pretty good summary of his interactions with the people of his parish. They desperately want help, but they don't want to admit it. And the only person that can help them is a representative of a dying organisation that is just as sinful as everyone else. Father Lavelle sits in a bar, and the bartender casually says, "Your church is on fire." Everyone gathers at the flaming building, though not to show support or farewell their second home. They gather to watch a building burn and to see if this man has broken yet.
About halfway through Calvary, Father Lavelle is visiting the aforementioned young prison inmate, Freddie Joyce (Domhnall Gleeson), who speaks of the girl he cannibalised. "She said she'd been abused before. So I said, "Well, once more isn't going to make any difference, then."" It ran my blood cold. He says he becomes God when the light in their eyes goes out. "No, you don't," Father Lavelle replies. "No, you don't." Freddie follows this up with a beg for forgiveness. This fucking piece of shit wants forgiveness. But doesn't he, like all people, deserve at least the chance to say he's sorry, if he truly thinks he is? "God made me, didn't he? So he understands me. He must do. Don't you think?" Father Lavelle gives one of his few insights into his faith. "I think if God can't understand you, Freddie, no-one can." With procedural grace, Calvary concludes with the reveal of the man who wants to see Father Lavelle dead. It may come as a surprise to you. To me, he was representative of the entire community. Father Lavelle asks his assailant why he had to kill his dog, an act that stands out as particularly horrific in a film that wallows in the depths of humanity. The gunman is mortified. "Why would I kill a dog? I love dogs." And in that moment, utterly true ugliness is revealed. People will hypothesise the identity of the dog killer, but to me it doesn't matter. In the same way that this man is representative of the community, the killer of Father Lavelle's dog was all of them. And in the face of his death, he couldn't even attribute the loss of his companion to the result of a mentally-imbalanced sexual abuse victim. There was someone much more level-headed in the community who just wanted to see him suffer. Perhaps like they were suffering, perhaps not. But the movie isn't content to end there. The gunman asks if Father Lavelle cried for his dog. He replies, "Yes." The gunman asks if Father Lavelle cried for the children raped by the Catholic church. He replies, "No." And, if I'm being honest, neither did I. When the innumerable counts began to pour out, I recognised it as loathsome, I felt sick and disgusted towards an organisation abusing its power, and then I moved on. As did Father Lavelle. It took a gun being pointed in his face to take notice. But even then, what will this do? What will it achieve? Calvary is content not answering this question, or any of its questions. It brought them up. The rest is on us. So what do you believe?
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