Comedy – Page 2 – The Framing Device

Calvary (Dir. John Michael McDonagh, 2014)

In the name of the Father.

Forgiveness is a tricky business especially when religion is thrown into the mix. For Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) everyday duties amid his often troubled, sometimes inexplicable, parishioners, take a sinister turn when, during confession, one of them tells the Priest that he will be murdered within the week. Father Lavalle is instructed to put his affairs in order because killing a Priest, and on a Sunday, “That’ll be a good one.” Given John Michael McDonagh’s last cinematic outing, you would be forgiven for expecting a punchline; The Guard was blackly comic, even laugh-out-loud chucklesome, and here – reunited again with leading man, Gleeson – one would expect much of the same. There are comic moments, however, the tone of Calvary is much darker; still amusing but angry.

This tragically woven satire has much to say about a country; fractured as it is amid financial ruin and governed, in part, by a disjointed religious institution as well as commenting on the themes of life, death, and faith – what is to be saved and what is to be damned. Using topical issues which have dogged the Catholic Church for decades, this is a who-will-do-it as opposed to a who-dunnit which unfolds like a subversive Western, rural Ireland an unlikely, yet perfect substitute for America’s Wild West with Gleeson as the ‘good’ hero attempting to save the deeply flawed town from themselves and, in doing so, himself from the lone gunman. Among the cast of characters there is the quirky atheist doctor (Aiden Gillen), the supercilious, smarmy banker (Dylan Moran), the cynical, religiously lapsed pub licensee (Pat Shortt), the imprisoned serial killer (Domhnall Gleeson), the cuckolded butcher (Chris O’Dowd), and even a village idiot (Killian Scott); all of whom Father Lavalle tries to steer onto the path of righteousness or dissuade from the life-choices they insist on pursuing, in addition to comforting his own self-destructive daughter (Kelly Reilly), before his day of reckoning. These people are deeply flawed, fallible, clearly as bad as each other and by-and-large vile products of the world they live in.

It is a film that re-envisions the Stations of the Cross albeit through a Parish Priest in County Sligo and while it is not quite perfect – the script meanders a little – Calvary is wonderful; original, modest, and bleakly dramatic with an outstanding performance by Brendan Gleeson who can convey so much with so very little; a big-bear of a gentle man who wears the cassock and clerical collar with aplomb – it is satsifying to see a decent Priest depicted, it feels like it has been far too long The film’s denouement is dramatic, grand, even operatic in scale, some may argue that it is misjudged but, gut-wrenching as it is, there is no other way it could have ended. With its biting satire, surprising comedy and sheer contemptible anger, Calvary delivers a body-blow that resonates long after the credits roll.

Out on DVD, Blu-ray and available via VoD on 11th August 2014

Sightseers (Dir. Ben Wheatley, 2012)

Redundancy, oppressive living environment thanks mainly to a passive-aggressive matriarch, canine-icide and all those little annoying habits of others, like littering, personal success and the class-divide which make one want to pummel in somebody’s skull – desires which social convention and psychological adjustment prevent – are the main themes of Ben Wheatley’s third directorial outing Sightseers following Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2011).

The main protagonists Chris (Steve Oram) and Tina (Alice Lowe) are lucky to find each other in this cynical age of romance and chance (plus it reaffirms the old adage that there is indeed someone for everyone however angry or homicidal you may be). He wants to show his new girlfriend “his world” which involves a caravan, a large bag of extra strong mints and excursions to some of the country’s leading, albeit, obscure heritage sites. Tina intends to let him and rock his (world) in her, wholly fetching, knitted bra and crotch-less, big knickers. Following an accident at their first stop (the tram museum) things take a sinister turn and their holiday tests them both and the strength of their relationship.

Chris refers to Tina as “his muse”, however, she is more of an unconventional femme fatale throughout a series of transgressions and while Sightseers’ pitch black context is, inadvertently, played for laughs, it is Tina’s story arc which is the most evolutionary. She embodies the two binaries of women which are often indicative of the noir: the dependable, domesticated and safe in addition to the alluring, sexual (the lingerie really has to be seen to be believed) and dangerous female. Chris is the male in crisis and she, on occasion, a function of his dilemma and powerlessness. Interestingly, the time she rebels against her own passivity and becomes the idealised version, she believes, Chris wants her to be is the moment when she is dressed at her most feminine, in a dress, completed with lipstick. The scene in which she exerts her first real sign of independence is also the scene in which she, it can be argued, seizes phallic power, here, signified as a very large writing pencil. Certainly, the last sequence does suggest that Tina is the one in control and has, perhaps, precipitated the whole journey and its outcome – “witch!”

This film really showcases Wheatley’s direction given his lack of involvement with the story and there will be comparisons made between this and Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May (1976) and like last year’s Kill List this film also owes a debt of gratitude to Hammer horror. Essentially, the fact that he did not write it makes this a radically different film from his previous, and yet still retains elements of the Wheatley style . Screenplay praise, of which there should be much heaping, falls to the writers and lead actors. Oram and Lowe who both had small parts in Kill List, are better known for their television roles in comedy series Tittybangbang and Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place respectively, as well as dual appearances in The Mighty Boosh and Channel 4’s Comedy Lab. Here, they are a match made in heaven as “a ginger faced man and an angry woman.”

Forget what has gone before, this is the comedy of the year. Caravanning is the deadliest and sexiest way to holiday.