Fruitvale Station

Fruitvale Station (2013)

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray, Octavia Spencer

Director: Ryan Coogler

Available on: Netflix


That race remains an awkward fixture in America’s collective consciousness should come as a surprise to few. In the era of Barack Obama, its role in the continental melting pot has become even more pointed and antagonistic, the idiotic right-wing proclamations that the United States now exists in a place beyond racism being undermined every time another black male dies for reasons stemming from the hue of his skin.

In her seminal 2010 study of the modern prison-industrial complex, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s suggests that public consciousness of prejudice is shaped only by the most ‘extreme expressions of individual bigotry, not by the way in which it functions naturally, almost invisibly… when it is embedded in the structure of a social system.’ Fascinatingly, Fruitvale Station, talent-to-watch Ryan Coogler’s searing directorial debut, captures that contention with a maturity many veteran filmmakers often fail to display.

Offering no judgement and little commentary, Coogler, nevertheless, produces a work of rare power; neither obscene nor violent, its message burrows to the core of Western society’s ongoing struggle with diversity and the residue of deep-seated maladies. Indeed, as recent local events continue to suggest, such problems do not reside solely on the far side of the Atlantic.

A darling of last year’s festival circuit — it won the Grand Jury prize at Sundance — the film, based on real-life events, depicts the shooting of a 22-year-old black man at Oakland’s Fruitvale metro stop on 1st January 2009. Returning from the new year celebrations in San Francisco, Oscar Grant was involved in a fracas on the train. Dragged from the carriage by a team of hyper-aggressive transit police, Grant and his friends were manhandled and detained for no specific reason. In the ensuing struggle Grant would be fatally wounded by an officer who claimed to have mistaken his firearm for a tazer. 

Being 2009, this was, of course, captured on video and the confused, chilling, pre-HD images flicker across the screen before the titles roll. The remaining time is spent with Grant, living out 24 hours in the company of this anonymous and struggling ex-con, a statistic on paper, perhaps, but a beloved son, father and partner. 

From the beginning, the central player is captured in handheld close-up, coloured with intimately human shades. There is admirable frankness in addressing his personal infidelities and history as a luckless former low-level dealer — a victim of the preposterous war on drugs — but, equally, Coogler is keen to highlight Grant as neither unusual nor especially remarkable. He is no different from anyone else and, in Michael B. Jordan, the director allows a fine actor to carry this narrative forward.

The Wire and Friday Night Lights were two of the past decade’s finest television dramas and ardent fans of both will be familiar with Jordan’s confident, hugely watchable presence. In each series the young performer portrayed misguided, yet sensitive, products of the streets. He invites empathy once again, casting Grant as an individual caught up in events larger than himself. 

There is a quiet tragedy in the various unexceptional occurrences that come and go for much of the film’s duration: Grant drops his girlfriend to work and his little girl to school; he stops for petrol; he witnesses a dog hit by a car, cradling the animal in his arms as it slips away; he begs his old boss for a job, then threatens the man when it is not forthcoming; and he is assiduous in attending to a family birthday party. 

To hustle is to live in the notoriously hardscrabble surroundings of Oakland, California, as much a feature of the daily grind as the quest for dignity. A potential cannabis deal is set against a flashback to Grant's last stint in prison, where the desperate need to embrace his mother (the always superb Octavia Spencer) is juxtaposed with the kind of jailhouse threats that will surely come back to haunt the issuer on the outside. Peppering his dialogue with authentic localised slang and vocal tics, Jordan imbues his character with an endearingly honest humanity.

Whatever the setting, it all represents the small, ordinary canvas onto which Coogler paints his larger themes of race, crime and inequality before the law. 

In many ways, Obama’s historic success underscores much of what goes on here. In the the abstract, his accession to the White House was a boon for the African-American community. With a hispanic girlfriend (Melonie Diaz), and an adorable daughter, Grant’s existence represents the humble post-racial aspirations of the country’s better nature. On the other hand, however, the Obama experience is a remarkable one, rarefied even. It shares few parallels with the life of a kid from Oakland and there is no small measure of symbolism in the fact that Grant should be slain in those halcyon months between the president’s election and his inauguration. 

The key incident, inevitable from the opening seconds, delivers the requisite visceral horror when it eventually arrives. Grant’s demise, in particular, is utterly heartbreaking, his mere profile inducing mass psychosis in those sworn to uphold, rather than trample, his rights. At the crucial point Jordan manages to convey an affecting mix of physical pain and a tearful sense of betrayal; the realisation of how this moment will impact those around him dawns long before he closes his eyes forever. 

Fruitvale Station is a compelling, essential picture, a meditation on the destructive corrosiveness of Alexander’s invisible and embedded structures. If there is anything to take away, it is the fact that Coogler has managed, remarkably, to craft a film about racism that pivots not on recognisable prejudice but on an insidious function of the system. For the Oscar Grants of the world, the deck may already be stacked.

An edited version of this article was first published here. 

Venus in Fur

There are few current film directors who can boast as cinematic a résumé as Roman Polanski. The timeless likes of Chinatown, Rosemary’s Baby and The Pianist sit proudly upon it but, throughout his controversial career, the exiled filmmaker has occasionally been attracted to the sheer theatricalism of the humble stage. 1994’s Death and the Maiden would be followed, eventually, by the quite brilliant Carnage in 2010, both being filmic adaptations of original plays. 

It is to this source then that Polanski returns once more with Venus in Fur, his newest exploration of theatre’s unique power. Taking place entirely within the confines of some faceless, crumbling auditorium, his film about a play — based, in turn, on David Ives’s play about a play — might, for all its arch storytelling, shudder under the weight of its own intensity but it is, nevertheless, a wickedly clever exploration of sexual domination. 

A two-hander, and Polanski’s first completely French language production, Venus in Fur features Mathieu Amalric as Thomas, the frustrated director-adapter of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s S&M opus, Venus in Furs. Uninspired by the actresses seeking the lead female role, Thomas is about to depart his somewhat ramshackle Parisian playhouse when, like a warped Mary Poppins, the disorganised, gum-chewing, curse-throwing Vanda (Polanski’s wife, Emmanuelle Seigner) tumbles through the door, late, rain-soaked and desperate to read for him. 

While ignorant of the material’s significance and possessing only a rudimentary knowledge of Thomas’s highbrow stylings, Vanda is a charming aspirant. With the aid of her enthusiasm and a treasure trove of strangely appropriate costumes, she convinces the onscreen director not just to hear her out but to participate in her instantly fantastic audition. From that point on, the boundaries between fiction and reality are blurred, if not rubbed out altogether as Vanda, her true motivations unclear, uses the very words that Thomas has written to drive him down a forbidden path. To wit, the sense that he is deeply connected to Sacher-Masoch’s outlook is never far away.

The piquancy between the two actors might otherwise dissolve if French were not the means by which they were communicating. In their sultry mother tongue, however, Amalric and Seigner luxuriate in the skewed eroticism of the interplay. The former, a wonderfully chameleonic actor, tones down his better-known, preening Bond-villain sensibilities in favour of something infinitely more repressed and his resemblance to a young Polanski will not go unnoticed. Indeed, the charged reference to modern society’s focus on child sex abuse represents more than a simple throwaway line when spoken by a man bearing such physical similarities. 

Next to him, Seigner is an undeniably vibrant presence. Curvaceous and oozing sensuality, she is a long way from her ethereal, waif-like breakout role in Frantic, her husband’s coolly paranoid 1988 Euro-thriller. Here the actress is reassuringly confident and, in keeping with the encroaching influence of the play’s obvious themes, increasingly tyrannical. 

From the beginning, Seigner strides around the set, creating more conducive lighting, groping the faintly obscene cut-outs of the naff Belgian Western with which the production is sharing a space and manipulating the malleable Thomas with stunning ease. She flits from the script to her own thoughts, conveying a nuanced distinction in character traits between these two versions of herself, one grounded, the other a scheming dominatrix. It is masterful stuff.

At his roots, of course, Polanski is a cinephile and he has added subtle flourishes here and there to heighten the immersive experience, from little sound effects accompanying the miming of actions by Thomas and Vanda to the clever italicising of subtitles when the dialogue shifts from spontaneous conversation to scripted verse. Tellingly, the latter comes to hold sway as the drama rolls on, Thomas’s thoughts and those of his inner submissive conflating on a profound level. 

Vanda, too, appears caught up in the facade. That said, her behaviour is more knowing, more cynical; she even manages, in one subversive exchange, to deconstruct the playwright’s safely unexciting existence, a lingerie-clad devil on the shoulder. Whatever this unpredictable starlet’s intentions, humiliation of her partner seems a priority and she seizes her chance with aplomb before the end, retaining the power while reversing the rehearsed roles with visceral consequences. 

That there is an element of farce to it all is unsurprising given the ludicrous premise yet, darker still, the inevitability of a Greek tragedy hangs over the bizarre finale. Vanda, enraged and cavorting in the nude, invokes Dionysus, the God of ecstasy and the great punisher of apostates in The Bacchae, an inspiration to the now stricken, subjugated Thomas in the crafting of his perverse work. 

Such is the tone. Dense and often stifling, Polanski’s latest foray onto the trodden board is a witty and ambitious entry from which it is almost impossible to escape. Taken at face value, and with an aspirin, one cannot fail to be amused. 

An edited version of this article was first published here. 

Fading Gigolo

It is no coincidence that Woody Allen should form so central a role in Fading Gigolo. John Turturro’s newest film as director, writer and star shares DNA with Allen’s coterie of evocative New York tales. Annie Hall and Manhattan were loving odes to the fabric of the great metropolis; Turturro’s newest project is similarly steeped in the city’s aura, existing in the faintly bohemian, off-the-beaten-track environs of Brooklyn, Soho and the Lower East Side. 

Taken at face value, its themes, curious double act and general location invoke Midnight Cowboy but, in truth, this a sweet and delicate picture which opts for whimsy instead of grit. 

As always, Allen employs his witty Jewish chatterbox schtick to portray struggling rare book proprietor Murray Schwartz. In packing up his unprofitable store — located next to a faceless Staples outlet — Murray floats the idea that his friend and assistant, Fioravante (Turturro), take up the opportunity to begin life as a Don Juan for hire. The older man’s glamorous dermatologist has, believe it or not, suggested to her patient that she would be open to a threesome with her curvaceous friend and a willing stranger. Spotting a financial opportunity, Murray convinces Fioravante to go along with his scheme and answer the good doctor’s call. A humble measure of success and cash quickly flow their way. 

As cinematic pimps go, Murray is hardly typical. His clever patter is a real joy to behold and as he expands his scope of operations, there is never a hint of sleazy hucksterism. Instead, his motivations are essentially low key: he spends money on a new couch for his girlfriend and her fantastically amusing children. Beyond that, he is merely occupying his own time. As he casually chats to a client on the phone while perusing various items of lingerie, one is struck by the fact that even after all these years, Allen — making a rare appearance in another person’s movie — is still the most watchable person on screen. 

Turturro, too, is a magnetic personality. Cool, suave and mildly sophisticated, this escort is, in fact, anything but fading. Indeed, it is easy to forget that this quietly charming professional lothario, fond of ornate flower arrangements and walks in the park, is the same goggle-eyed oddball who has, for so many years, served filmmakers as diverse as the Coen brothers and Michael Bay. Yet, Turturro is an accomplished auteur away from his more notable work with both Mac and Romance and Cigarettes displaying his facility for nuanced drama. 

With Murray’s assistance he is soon servicing both Sharon Stone, the adventurous doctor, and Sofia Vergara, her predatory ally. While it is not hard to see the reasons for Turturro choosing to bear these burdens, he does an admirable job in portraying Fioravante as more than a cold womaniser. There is a deep well of kindness beneath his placid exterior, a trait best realised in his hesitant relationship with Avigal, an ethereal Jewish widow of Murray’s acquaintance. Vanessa Paradis brings a restrained quality to this somewhat anomalous character. As she bonds with the gentle gigolo, friendship and human contact fuel their connection, not sex. 

In contrast to the sultry encounters of Fioravante’s work life, and in keeping with Paradis’s heritage, Avigal is accompanied by an upbeat French soundtrack as she makes her way, tentatively, though the world outside her stifling Williamsburg locale. Aided by her new beau’s gentle encouragement, it is she, not the rich uptown vamps, who benefits most from his presence.

It is also arguable that this strand represents the film’s largest hurdle. Catering to the whims of wealthy Manhattan mistresses is engaging in its own risqué way yet there appears little reason for Fioravante, a stranger, to be massaging the bare back of a Hasidic woman in mourning nor for completely removing her sheitel in public. His actions are not born of lust but they do appear to disregard the basic rules of an entire community; they dismiss their importance. 

Liev Schreiber’s watchful neighbourhood patrolman seems like a pest at first glance. As it turns out, however, he is right to express concern about the direction of Avigal’s modesty. Granted, she does not succumb wholly to the temptations of secular life — it isn’t that sort of film — but the episode sits uncomfortably, if not obscenely, with the otherwise cheeky atmosphere at which Turturro is aiming. 

Such fumbles notwithstanding, the two stars crackle when together and one is reminded of Allen’s undoubted quality in pictures where he is allowed, simply, to be Woody Allen. More broadly, Turturro has constructed something terrifically watchable here, its occasional chauvinistic leanings aside. Refined and stylish, Fading Gigolo may hint at simple wish fulfilment but it is never less than glintingly knowing. 

An earlier version of this article was first published here.

The Two Faces of January

When it comes to literary depictions of sinister amorality, there are few better exponents than the late Patricia Highsmith. Themes of avarice, criminality, latent homosexuality and antiheroism — if not outright villainy — pepper her refined, often cruelly resolved, novels. 

Best known for her ‘Ripliad’, a series of stories centred on the cunning protagonist Tom Ripley, Highsmith’s universe is both gloomy and often marked by ostensible elegance and luxury. Ripley was a calculating con artist, coldly pursuing the opulence, power and influence in no way owed to him. He was birthed from the darkness embraced so readily by his creator. Matt Damon’s murderously conniving, emotionally ambiguous performance was especially chilling in Anthony Minghella’s masterful The Talented Mr Ripley, an adaptation which rooted Highsmith’s horrifying creation firmly in the modern zeitgeist. 

The world of Ripley is that of the beautiful Mediterranean climes so attractive to the well-heeled American ex-pats — compatriots, of course — who constitute his prey. Indeed, The Two Faces of January plays out under the same azure skies of southern Europe. Based on Highsmith’s 1964 book, Hossein Amini’s directorial debut is a beautifully shot, genuinely gripping psychological thriller which mines the same cringe-inducing tension between courtesy and repulsion that rendered Minghella’s dramatic study of insincerity so fascinating. While the characters here are less horrifying than the parasitic Ripley, and the feckless Dickie Greenleaf, they are just as complex. 

Opening in 1962, on the bustling steps of the Parthenon, January introduces Rydal Keener, an urbane multilingual American wastrel who makes his living as a tour guide, gently exploiting college girls and creaming commissions from wealthy, clueless visitors to his Athenian patch. Fresh off his weighty turn in the Coens’ stunning Inside Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac imbues Rydal with a fascinating mix of shiftiness and likeability. On the one hand, he is clearly an opportunistic dandy, drifting from scam to scam and fleeing personal demons – a difficult home life in the US is hinted at throughout — on the other, Isaac skilfully suggests that Rydal is genuinely layered. Financial motivations aside, there is much to consider behind his faintly mournful eyes.

From the moment his attention is captured by wealthy New York couple Chester and Colette MacFarland, Rydal’s fate becomes somewhat more tenuous. The MacFarlands should be the perfect mark: malleable, gullible, loaded. Unfortunately for Rydal, his street wisdom is not enough to save him from ensnarement in their secretive travails. Played with sophistication by Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, the duo are not exactly Bonnie and Clyde but appearances are increasingly deceptive. Ironically, Rydal, for all his lightweight trickery, emerges as the film’s least obscure individual. 

Witness to the aftermath of unintended violence, he spots an opening for a quick profit, yet is also vaguely bewitched by Colette. Kirsten Dunst is an increasingly serious, eclectic performer and her portrayal here is many things: lovely, subtle, loyal and tragic. At her side, Mortensen’s is a towering presence. While this handsome swindler, veering from genial and wise to brutally pragmatic, may be out of his comfort zone, he is not particularly out of his depth. Like Ripley, he is resourceful; less of a chameleon, perhaps, but possessed of a talent for survival. 

Thrown together, voluntarily at first, Rydal and the MacFarlands exchange pleasantries and superficial affection. The bonhomie, however, lasts only as long as an evening meal. From that point on, an air of quiet awkwardness is prevalent. These people, in truth, have only their passports in common, and even those are false. 

It is here that the comparisons with Highsmith’s earlier material seems most apposite. Granted, there is no moment to rival Greenleaf’s horrifying, toe-curling realisation that Ripley’s suffocating companionship represents more than an irritating obsession. Yet, as Rydal is sucked deeper into the bog, as his life and liberty are jeopardised, he appears unable to avert the inevitable.

In recognising the thematic tropes which underpin the genre, Amini, working from his own script, has excelled in producing a feature to rival Minghella’s wonderful vision. The British director is now suitably recovered from the ignominy of being responsible for penning last year’s Keanu Reeves horror show, 47 Ronin. Instead, he shows off the panache which spurred him to write 2011’s Drive. January and Drive, admittedly, share little DNA beyond their lonely, placeless leading men but Amini has accomplished the not inconsiderable task of pivoting from the latter’s stylishly indulgent, though knowingly empty, neo-noir to something infinitely more rugged. 

Hitchcock echoes through the encroaching paranoia as Rydal, Colette and Chester slope off into the arid Cretan outback and Amini ably harnesses the duality that informs it all. As Janus, the Roman God of transitions from which the eponymous month takes its name, observed the cosmos with two faces, so too does the film rely on the dangers of opposing viewpoints, whether deliberate or otherwise. Wires are crossed, situations misunderstood and identities shed. By the finale, the truth is the most elusive thing of all.

‘There’s a surprise around every corner,’ says Chester, sagely. The summer’s first great film is surely one of them.

Frank

Biopics have always occupied a particular corner of the cinematic genre. They can be noble, serious, forensically constructed and extremely long. There are good ones (Raging Bull), bad ones (J. Edgar) and downright ugly ones (Jobs). They are tricky, too. Even Michael Mann, perhaps the best pure cinema director alive, fumbled the task with Ali, a coldly distant study of boxing’s greatest showman.  

Obscure, crazed and occasionally tender, Frank is nothing like any of these. In truth, it barely falls into the category marked ‘biopic’. Inspired by the bizarre career of the late Chris Sievey, director Lenny Abrahamson uses the musician’s life as a rough guide rather than a closely followed map. In doing so he crafts a film which is at once a strangely affecting road movie and a depiction of skewed genius.

As a struggling musician in the early Eighties, Sievey’s decision to abandon his band, The Freshies, and try something new gave birth to Frank Sidebottom. Sidebottom was an unsettlingly warped alter-ego defined by his sharp suits, broad Mancunian accent and giant Max Fleischer-inspired, papier-mâché head. Neither his music nor his comedy would bring him great wealth or acclaim and he would die penniless in 2010. Yet, his creation — a grotesque, mildly subversive oddball — would secure him cult status and post-mortem cool. 

If anything, the head is Abrahamson's truest link between reality and fiction. In the title role (the name Sidebottom never comes up) Michael Fassbender moves his accent away from Manchester and places it somewhere between Killarney and Kansas, the muffling effect of the permanent, enormous, blue-eyed cranium turning his rich voice into a clipped monotone. Lithe and energetic, the Kerry actor appears to have a great time eschewing his leading man credentials in favour of a faceless, unpredictable man-child, vacillating between grounded practicalities — ‘I have a certificate,’ he intones, when challenged over the mask — and the obsessive pursuit of sonic perfection. 

Fassbender sits happily at the centre of an increasingly deranged creative process, observed, with genuine bewilderment, by Domhnall Gleeson’s meek keyboardist, Jon. Floating through a dull life in his bland middle-class seaside town, Jon is a listless musician and a bored worker drone whose initially pathetic tweets punctuate the screen throughout. He is keen then to grasp an early chance encounter with Frank and his awkwardly-monikered band, The Soronprfbs. Before long, Jon is relocating to a remote Irish island for the recording of this curious group’s new album. 

Nothing is committed to tape until Frank is ready and to this end, with the aid of his inherited ‘nest egg’, Jon spends the next year in a verdant bedlam. More than a wide-eyed narrator, he emerges as a layered and quietly selfish antagonist, viewed with suspicious disdain by abrasive theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and with benign indifference by Frank himself. The Soronprfbs’ music might charitably be described as surreal but the young man discerns inspiration beneath the din. 

Surreptitiously, he secures the band a place at Texas hipster circus South By Southwest and it is at this stage that the wheels truly come off. Gone are the aimless days of charmed lunacy, for Jon’s misunderstanding of what makes Frank tick is as profound as the frontman is complex. Whether or not the interloper is motivated by the desire to be rich and famous is unclear but he is certainly not on the same page as everyone else. The Soronprfbs are an eclectic bunch but each of them is in thrall to Frank’s musical proclivities; critical recognition and success do not feature much in their collective thinking. 

Where previously he was simply along for the ride, Jon takes control with disastrous results. By exploiting Frank’s vague desire to be ‘likeable’, he unwittingly stirs up the obvious mental illness that hovers over everything, a cloud which is, at first glance, amusing in an faintly obscene way. Frank and his good-natured manager Don (a restrained Scoot McNairy) share more than just a fondness for random sounds. Their personal demons — raw, unexplainable, unconnected to the clichéd darkness that Jon assumes to be their natural habitat — were containable in the isolated reverie of the island studio. In the focused scrutiny of the outside world, however, they break loose.

Frank never loses its light tone but little in the last reel is mined for laughs as Jon struggles to clean up after his clumsy excursion into treacherous waters. His fascination with the giant head borders on the morbid and so it comes as a great surprise when, in the wake of his psychological tipping-point, Frank’s human features are there for all to see. Robbed of his persona, he is a mere shell and, cleverly, Abrahamson shows a downcast Fassbender solely in profile until the end. Indeed, as the camera slowly works its way around to fully expose his gaunt visage, a returning sliver of confidence allows the real Frank to be properly recognised. 

An edited version of this article was first published here.

Calvary

He has only occupied the helm of two films thus far in his career but Irish auteur John Michael McDonagh may already have established something of a cinematic brand: acerbic, darkly comic, bleak. 

His debut, 2011’s The Guard, was a hilarious, strangely affable tale of an unpredictable — though brilliant — country policeman in the wilds of Connemara. Brutally honest and surprisingly sweet, its towering leading man, Brendan Gleeson, was almost outdone by the empty, spectacularly desolate backdrop of the Galway scrub. The presence of the ever excellent Don Cheadle, dropped into a locale so completely beyond his normal range, made it all the more endearing.

By placing Calvary, his sophomore effort, once more in Ireland’s windswept western reaches, McDonagh leans again on the expressiveness of such a startlingly glorious place, all cloudy greens and blanched, salty blues. Similar in look, if not tone, to his first feature, the director’s fondness for the beautiful gloominess of these landscapes takes him north to Sligo and a sleepy, unnamed town. 

What is depicted there contrasts starkly with the snide cheeriness of The Guard. Set against sweeping hills and verdant fields, Gleeson’s James Lavelle is a morose but well-intentioned priest ministering to the mildly grotesque laity of a parish existing in the cold shadow of the mighty Benbulben. There is comedy here, of course, but a pitch black chord strangles any jollity. The humour is not cruel but nor is it uplifting. 

The overarching theme throughout is of deep and barely contained anger. Sure, the setting is ripped straight from a picture book of twee Irish vistas but this is undoubtedly a country in which the Celtic Tiger’s carcass is beginning to smell. Indeed, that rage regularly threatens to consume the weary bonhomie. It is directed at the banks, repossessing all around them as their former foot soldiers — best personified by Dylan Moran’s ostensibly awful financier — grow fat from their ill-gotten spoils. The state, too, is a target of this bubbling resentment but, above all else, it is the church which sits at the centre of the disquiet. 

Institutional abuse and organisational avarice fuel the flames, flames which will eventually, casually, consume Lavelle’s humble chapel in an obvious act of arson. One of a number of shocking developments, it suggests, at that moment, in glowingly paganistic terms, that isolated, rural Ireland is no longer the pulsing heartland of church influence and dogma.

In this confrontational atmosphere, Gleeson’s taciturn cleric is faced with a startling opening line and a chilling warning from one unseen, abuse-surviving confessor. Killing a bad priest would mean nothing to the public, goes the parishioner’s logic, but murdering a good one, on a Sunday, would certainly grab the world’s attention. He is to be the sacrificial lamb. 

Given a week to put his affairs in order, Lavelle accepts his lot with noble resignation, neither sure of the threat’s veracity, nor, it seems, especially distressed by it. Over the course of the next seven days he attempts to bring about some measure of absolution, both to himself and his flock, yet his limited pastoral success indicates the diminished stature of Catholicism within modern Irish society. Lavelle’s presence is an irritation to many in his community, inevitable but wholly without use. People attend Mass out of habit but they pay little heed to the man in the cassock; some even seem to hate him.

This is a pity, for Lavelle is a good man of genuine faith. The peerless Gleeson has once again fashioned an avuncular and hugely likeable figure. The actor, fast becoming the cinematic muse in a creative partnership with his director, imbues Lavelle with a dry wit and, in contrast to his limp curate, Father Leary (David Wilmot), an innate sense of ordinary decency. In one scene, Moran — a Ross O’Carroll-Kelly of the Sligo coast if you will — produces his chequebook to make a donation to the parish. Leary slithers into position like some grateful donee of old but Lavelle, the populist, coldly, and honestly, drives up the figure, knowing all too well the greedy depths of the other man’s pockets.  

Beyond Moran and Wilmot, the cast is just as impressive. Chris O’Dowd ratchets up the creepy factor as a faux genial butcher-cuckold, unworried by his leering wife’s adultery. Aiden Gillen turns in his usual schtick: whispery, rude, quietly hateful. His black-hearted doctor is perhaps the film’s most disturbing presence, an abrasively cruel Beckettian observer seeking little beyond his own instant gratification. 

Obversely, Kelly Reilly serves a different purpose as Lavelle’s fragile, self-scarred daughter, the residue of a life before his vocation, a time marked by alcohol and violence. Even with her own demons, spawned, perhaps, by her father’s path, she represents something real, normal and, worst of all, certain to depart.

Such melancholy persists until the closing credits as the destructive power of corrupted innocence strikes a note of true sadness. The Guard was coming, undeniably, from a place of broad comedy, albeit in varying shades of darkness. Calvary, on the other hand, takes aim at something more visceral, namely the ailing spiritual wellbeing of a nation struggling to reconcile religion and fact. 

Fascinatingly brave, McDonagh’s commentary is likely to affect some more than others. The fury lying beneath, however, is tangible and real enough to taste, no matter the name or face of one’s God. 

An edited version of this article was first published here. 

Luis Suarez: the only option.

My new article over on opinionfootball.com

PFA Player of the Year: The only option

'Suarez is that rarest of beasts. Rising from the same ground as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Zlatan Ibrahimovic, he is an artist blessed not only with the game’s most prized ability, but with the prodigious gifts to exist above and beyond the rest of an already gilded plane.'

Check it out here.