a&e | FILM REVIEWS
FATHER FIXATIONS Calvary. Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, and Kelly Reilly star in a film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh. Reviewed by D.J. Palladino
I
n the opening scene of Calvary, Brendan Gleeson plays a Catholic priest named Father James who takes confession from a troubled person we can’t see. The confessee claims that as a child he was repeatedly raped by a priest and promises to murder his confessor “Sunday next” not because James was the rapist but, more to the point, because he is innocent. The rest of the movie follows Father James’s week as he wanders among family, friends, and parishioners who naturally become a pageant of flawed and suspect humanity. It’s a situation that boils over with melodrama, but in the hands of director John Michael McDonagh, each tense interaction provides new perspectives on sin, insensitivity, and the almost forgotten virtue of forgiveness. McDonagh directed The Guard, which was superficially shaped like a buddy cop thriller, but also bristled with meditations on death, morality, and the fine points of bigotry. Calvary is ostensibly a who-is-gonna-do-it mystery, but the themes become more compelling as each new quirky villager is introduced. Which one of these people might not be capable of killing a priest given the circumstances? Father James (the name traditionally assigned to Jesus’s brother) is a priest who was once married and has a beautiful daughter (Kelly Reilly) who has just tried to kill herself. The townie irregulars include a hapless cuckold played by the great Chris O’Dowd and a violently atheistic doctor (Aidan Gillen) whose soliloquy on God’s cruelty makes Beckett seem tame. We also meet a beauti-
SHADOW OF DEATH: Brendan Gleeson plays a priest whose life is threatened in Calvary.
Thievery Corporation®
ful woman whose faith is unshaken even after losing her beloved husband in a senseless car wreck. Strangely, McDonagh’s pet themes (including ironic thoughts about pets) meld with those of his playwright brother, Martin, who directed In Bruges, as if theatrical ideas got carried in their DNA. Together they’re the most entertaining moralists in film today. They both point out how shifting are the dark lines of self-scrutiny — confession is supposed to be good for the soul, but in Calvary it sets the stage for a lot of troubling questions about any ■ redemption that’s based in self-sacrifice.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
STEPHEN “RAGGA” MARLEY (ACOUSTIC SET)
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH at 6:30 pm
WITH SPECIAL GUEST
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 17TH at 7pm
The Giver. Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, and Meryl Streep star in a film written by Michael Mitnick and Robert B. Weide, based on the novel by Lois Lowry, and directed by Phillip Noyce. Reviewed by Kit Steinkellner
I
t’s no coincidence that Lois Lowry’s Newbery Medal– winning dystopian children’s novel The Giver has only now been adapted for the big screen, more than 20 years after its initial publication in 1993, in the wake of monster success dystopian YA novels The Hunger Games and Divergent and their triumphant book-to-film adaptations. But The Giver also makes sense now in a way it wouldn’t have in the mid-’90s, when coming-of-age films looked like Jumanji and Clueless. The trouble with adapting The Giver in the wake of blockbusters like The Hunger Games is that The Giver was not written to be a blockbuster. It’s a quiet and internal story of a boy growing up in a false utopia that celebrates sameness, a boy who is given the opportunity to gaze into the past and see all the wonders his world has lost (snow, music, and love, to name a few) in their quest to create a world without pain and suffering. This adaptation attempts to honor its source material while creating a film that a new generation can get behind. As a result, the lead character, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), is aged up (11 becomes 16), and Fiona (Odeya Rush), a mere crush in the novel, becomes a full-blown romantic interest in the film. Jonas’s painful and obvious tell-don’t-show voiceover is peppered throughout the film, and the third act, now all action sequences, bears
FAILURE TO DELIVER: Despite a strong performance from Jeff Bridges (left, opposite Brenton Thwaites), The Giver doesn’t live up to its source material.
almost no resemblance to the book’s ending, where our protagonist makes a quiet exodus from his community. The Giver is a film that struggles in its reinvention, but that isn’t to say it’s without its merits. There are excellent performances (of note, Jeff Bridges in the title role, who also serves as producer on this film and has worked doggedly for almost two decades to get it made). Director Phillip Noyce builds out his world beautifully, and his use of color (a critical component of the book’s narrative) is masterful. But in its struggle to keep up with the times, the adaptation simply does not live up to its source material — even if it makes for an enjoyable and worthwhile hour ■ and a half at the theater.
TICKETS AT: SB BOWL BOX OFFICE / ARLINGTON THEATRE / CHARGE BY PHONE 800-745-3000 WALMART / TICKETMASTER.COM / NEDERLANDERCONCERTS.COM / SBBOWL.COM
august 21, 2014
tHE INDEPENDENt
55