AUSTRALIA
Eureka Street
Tim Kroenert | 02 July 2014
Calvary begins with a threat. Ensconced in the anonymity of the confessional, a man who has suffered injustice at the hands of the Church informs the priest, Fr James Lavelle (Gleeson), that he plans to kill him. Not because Lavelle has committed any wrong — quite the opposite. He has been singled out because he is ‘a good priest’, to pay the price for the sins of his brethren.
During the week leading up to the deadline set by his would-be killer, Lavelle goes about his pastoral duties within his windswept seaside parish. The ominously titled Calvary traces these earnest ramblings, which are as much a part of a personal pilgrimage — a ‘setting in order of his house’, as suggested by the killer — as a continuation of clerical duty.
He counsels a young man who is angered that he is denied the affections of women. He mediates a domestic violence situation involving affable butcher Jack (O’Dowd), his unfaithful wife Veronica (O’Rourke), and her lover, Simon (De Bankolé), an ill-tempered mechanic from the Ivory Coast. He resists the request of an elderly writer (Walsh) to acquire a gun, for the purposes of self-euthanasia.
He also endures the condescension of wealthy blue-blood Michael (Moran), and the more hostile slights heaped upon him in the local tavern by, among others, snidely atheistic doctor Frank (Gillen). Amidst these other trials he attempts to reconnect with his estranged daughter Fiona (Reilly), who feels that his decision to join the priesthood after the death of her mother was a kind of abandonment.
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