Calvary – Opening Confession
What is the best way to open a film? Some director will try to bring in a haunting, unforgettable image, like the forest burning from Apocalypse Now. Others will rely on triumphant music to set the tone, as Disney often does. Sometimes, the screenwriter will draw attention to the dialogue, immersing the audience into the feeling and intensity of this world. Often, that first impression comes via voice-over. However, in John Michael McDonagh’s terrific, under-seen drama Calvary, he opens with a gripping confession.
The four-minute scene is all done in one shot, lingering on the sunken face of Father James (Brendan Gleeson) as he listens to an unidentified man explain that a priest raped him as a young boy. Now that this priest is dead, the man wants redemption by killing another leader of the church. Who has he chosen to unleash his fury upon? Father James, who now has to come to terms with his own life before the man kills him the next weekend. “Killing a priest on a Sunday,” the man scoffs. “That’ll be a good one.”
It’s a mesmerizing, shocking opening scene that lays out the moral ambiguity, the plot and some of the film’s more colorful dialogue in a span of a few minutes. The camera is still, soaked under brown light and never moving from Gleeson’s stoic, if slightly terrified face. The moment juxtaposes the severity of Lavelle’s faith with the futility of the anonymous man who speaks with him, setting up Calvary’s divide between the father and his parish. With a cynical sense of humor, sharp plotting and thick suspense, it is the year’s most masterful starting sequence.
– Jordan Adler