Movie Watch: "Calvary" at MoMI -- first watch the movie, then watch the writer-director and principal actor talk about it

Brendan Gleeson as Father James Lavelle

by Ken

Here's something to imagine. Imagine that you've just seen a movie that so overwhelmed and shocked you that at the end you hadn't yet had time to piece together how you felt -- a film that is so centrally built around its central character that he's a central piece of the architecture of the film (into which he had substantial input) -- and you knew that when the lights went up, the film's writer-director and principal actor would be coming onstage to talk about it!

Regular readers have probably guessed that the setting was the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, from which I just got home with 55 minutes till my post deadline. (I should admit that I did a fair amount of mostly illegible scribbling on the long two-train subway ride home. It remains to be seen, however, how useful that scribbling will prove.) What we saw was a members-only screening, courtesy of Fox Searchlight, of Calvary, the second film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, and the principal actor was Brendan Gleeson, who had worked with McDonagh on his first film, The Guard, which I should say I had never heard of let alone seen (though now I guess I'll have to make it my business to. Variety's Justin Chang describes The Guard as "still the most successful Irish indie of all time."

I've written a fair amount (last September, for example, and as recently as this 4th of July) about the outsize pleasure I've derived from MoMI screenings and the extraordinary discussions that often accompany them -- like tonight's. And sure enough, it was chief curator David Schwartz who introduced tonight's program and led the post-screening discussion. (It was just last weekend that David was introducing a members-only preview of the about-to-open exhibition devoted to the legendary cartoon and animated-film director Chuck Jones. That exhibition, by the way, is a collaborative undertaking that has been conceived from the outset as a traveling show, so watch for it in a museum near you.)

One thing I've learned about MoMI screenings, though, is never to read the program hand-out till after the screening. It's something McDonagh and Gleeson didn't have to think about as they talked about the film, because they knew we had all just seen it. But sure enough, although tonight's program note consisted of a really smart review by the aforementioned Justin Chang of Variety, I'm sure glad I hadn't read it before seeing the film. To my mind, it gives away much too much that it seems to viewer is meant to sort out for him/herself as the picture begins to unfold.

This much I can say. The film takes us through a week in the life of a small-town Irish priest -- a good priest and a good man. (McDonagh explained that in the conception of the film, which he was able to accomplish during the extraordinarily protracted editing of The Guard, one of the things he wanted to do was to make a film about a good man.) Father James is in a condition of imminent personal crisis, and it's a crisis that is in no way his fault. (If you're thinking that in view of the worldwide priest scandals of these growing decades priests deserve to have anything that's dumpable dumped on them, let me assure you that this is in fact the animating subject of the film.)

Writer-director John Michael McDonagh

In the course of following Father James around for that week, we are introduced to a rogues' gallery of parishioners, and here I think Justin Chang gives away just the right amount:

There's a butcher (Chris O'Dowd) who is initially suspected of beating his town-slut wife (Orla O'Rourke), until he explains that she probably sustained her injuries at the hands of her Ivorian-immigrant lover (Isaach De Bankole). There's also a vaguely sinister police detective (Gary Lydon, reprising his role from The Guard whom the priest interrupts mid-tryst with a saucy male prostitute (Owen Sharpe), a doctor (Aidan Gillen) who makes no secret of his violently atheist views; and extravagantly wealthy man (Dylan Moran) whose riches have failed to bring him any lasting happiness; a sex-starved young man (Killian Scott) considering joining the army in order to vent his violent impulses; and an aging American writer (M. Emmet Walsh) determined to end life on his own terms.

All these villagers are introduced, one after another, in a series of sharply written, compellingly acted and increasingly pointed moral discussions, during which the priest will offer his counsel  . But the richest insights here are those we glean into the character of the grizzled clergyman himself . . . whose every nugget of hard-headed wisdom resonates with bitter life knowledge.

Onstage afterward, John Michael McDonagh and Brendan Gleeson were smart and intense and funny. McDonagh explained that the climax of the film had always been part of his conception, and that in fact the exigencies of a tight filming schedule dictated that it was shot near the beginning of the film, Gleeson noted that having that already safely on film had made shooting the rest of it freer and easier for him. I've mentioned that MoMI audiences ask excellent questions, and one about the film's setting elicited the information that Sligo is where his mother's people are from, and so he had visited often growing up, and therefore knew the locations -- including a large, barren flat-topped mountain that we see a lot of in the film.

M. Emmet Walsh

Which reminds me, the film is extraordinarily beautiful, and that reminds me that both it and The Guard were shot by the outstanding cinematographer Larry Smith. McDonagh explained that early on he had been thinking that Smith would be the ideal person to shoot The Guard but that he assumed there was no way he could get him to do it -- until it occurred to him that if he didn't ask, he certainly couldn't get him. He wound up asking and getting him, now for both pictures. Which turns out to be how M. Emmet Walsh was cast as well. I think McDonagh said it was his wife who had suggested that the great character actor would be perfect for the role, and again, if you don't ask, you don't get.

Both McDonagh and Gleeson talked about how much they enjoyed working with Walsh. Gleeson mentioned that after shooting was completed, he got a note from him saying that he'd finally worked his way up to Dublin, and everywhere he ate he generously dropped Gleeson's name -- and paid full price everywhere. Gleeson also talked about what it was like working with his son, who played a seriously psychopathic murderer Father James visits in prison. He explained that after working on the scene together, they went their separate ways for a week before shooting the scene.

That's the sort of detail that you don't need to "get" the film, but that deepens your understanding of and appreciation for the kind of effort that goes into producing something of lasting value.

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