The McDon­agh Broth­ers’ visions of Irish guilt and morality

“Do not despair; one of the thieves was saved. Do not pre­sume; one of the thieves was damned.”

These are the words that open John Michael McDonagh’s 2014 film Cal­vary, often attrib­uted to St. Augus­tine and was favoured by the infa­mous­ly bleak drama­tist, Samuel Beck­ett. This axiom gives the audi­ence a brief glimpse into the film’s cen­tral con­flict. While host­ing con­fes­sion, Father James Lavelle (Bren­dan Glee­son) is told by an unseen parish­ioner that in a week’s time he will be mur­dered as an act of revenge for the sex­u­al abuse he suf­fered at the hands of anoth­er uncon­nect­ed cler­gy­man. This starts Lavelle on dark­ly com­ic jour­ney that tests his faith, his patience, and his virtues, as he vis­its the trou­bled mem­bers of his parish and tries to fig­ure out which one is plan­ning to mur­der him.

What may appear a straight­for­ward (pre) mur­der-mys­tery is in fact much deep­er. McDon­agh piv­ots from the arche­typ­al revenge nar­ra­tive and turns his atten­tion towards a much wider issue, one that exam­ines the rela­tion­ship between its char­ac­ters and their respec­tive strat­i­fied faith in the Catholic church. If Lavelle is McDonagh’s mag­ni­fy­ing glass, Calvary’s eclec­tic crew of side char­ac­ters are his sub­jects, each rep­re­sent­ing a sort-of con­flict­ing par­a­digm of the mod­ern strains on the Irish people’s rela­tion­ship with the insti­tu­tion that’s weaved through­out its his­to­ry and culture.

If the film is a suc­cess, it’s because it revokes any need to moralise through Father Lavelle quot­ing scrip­ture or dol­ing out heavy-hand­ed apho­risms; Gleeson’s stead­fast per­for­mance paints Lavelle as some­one whose faith isn’t exclu­sive to Catholi­cism, but instead ral­lies behind the uni­ver­sal strengths of empa­thy and under­stand­ing, per­haps sig­nalling a new dawn for the dis­il­lu­sioned, one that can move for­ward, free from the shad­ow of religion.

It’s no sur­prise that a film teem­ing with such divi­sive and deeply res­o­nant sub­ject mat­ter pro­vokes such a split reac­tion, and the some­what ambigu­ous end­ing echoes a sim­i­lar notion to that pro­vid­ed by the quote at the begin­ning of the film. The inher­ent dual­i­ty with­in Catholi­cism only fur­thers this. The audi­ence is left in the unknow­ing wake of whether or not Father James’ death was in vain, or in mar­tyr­dom. It’s wicked­ly dark, and deft­ly han­dled by McDon­agh through­out, who is no stranger to the pitch-black com­e­dy at the heart of many Irish films.

Like John Michael, his broth­er Mar­tin is equal­ly com­fort­able wad­ing in the murky waters of tragi­com­e­dy and is no-doubt best known for his 2008 crime caper In Bruges, in which two hit­men, Ray (Col­in Far­rell) and Ken (Bren­dan Glee­son), are sent to Bruges to lay low after Ray’s first hit goes awry. The pair hide out in the goth­ic city and await fur­ther instruc­tions from their boss Har­ry (Ralph Fiennes), who instructs Ken to mur­der Ray as rec­om­pense for his botched job. Like Cal­vary, In Bruges is more con­cerned with the moral string­ings of its main char­ac­ters, and is filled with beau­ti­ful and barbed paradoxes.

Take the two hit­men for exam­ple. Gleeson’s Ken is the wis­er of the two, a ratio­nal man who embraces the slow pace of Bruges and its beau­ti­ful build­ings with all their ​‘alcoves’, where­as Farrell’s Ray is a brash, first-timer, bored out of his wits with­in hours of arriv­ing, and strug­gles to shake off his all-con­sum­ing guilt. The two could not be more dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed, and yet, despite their dif­fer­ences, are unit­ed by an hon­our-among-thieves that’ll bind them until their even­tu­al, blood-soaked judgement.

This judge­ment, and the crime that pro­ceeds it book­end the film; with the major­i­ty of the action tak­ing place with­in the medieval walls of the city, a not-so-sub­tle stand-in for a pseu­do-pur­ga­to­ry with a litany of reli­gious build­ings and goth­ic archi­tec­ture. These two char­ac­ters await their fate in a sim­i­lar way to that of Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’s ​‘Wait­ing for Godot’ – a seem­ing­ly con­sis­tent through-line between the broth­ers’ work.

What remains a stand out since its release almost 15 years ago is the acer­bic, razor-sharp dia­logue that cuts through the weighty motifs of guilt, moral­i­ty and redemp­tion. Like his broth­er, Mar­tin McDon­agh nego­ti­ates the fine line between absurd dark humour and the deeply trou­bling with an assured fleet-foot­ed­ness, nev­er once let­ting the bal­anc­ing act stum­ble. Adding to this are the accor­dant, if a lit­tle on the nose, ref­er­ences to oth­er equal­ly moral­ly-aligned media and art. In one scene, our intre­pid hit­men view and dis­cuss ​‘The Last Judge­ment’, a trip­tych by Hierony­mus Bosch that’s strewn with sec­u­lar imagery and mir­rors the film’s nar­ra­tive beats, crime, judge­ment, punishment.

Where Cal­vary avoids moral­is­ing, In Bruges rev­els in it. In their sor­did world of hit­men and gang­sters, Ken, Ray and Har­ry adhere to a strict, albeit unusu­al, moral code. After it’s revealed that what con­sti­tutes as cross­ing the line is killing a child (a crime that Ray is guilty of) Har­ry seeks out the pair of hit­men and embod­ies the roles of judge, jury and self-imposed exe­cu­tion­er. McDon­agh, ever the sly satirist, deploys a sting­ing twist that scup­pers his antagonist’s plans and lam­poons the kingpin’s moral code.

It’s some­what iron­ic that two of the quin­tes­sen­tial mod­ern Irish films have been made by two eng­lish-born broth­ers. Both Mar­tin and John Michael were born to Irish par­ents, and while they weren’t raised on the Emer­ald Isle, the sib­lings often spent the sum­mer on the West Coast of Ire­land and have a firm, nuanced grasp of the country’s his­to­ry and culture.

Their films, specif­i­cal­ly the two in ques­tion, are inher­ent­ly Irish, and deal with the sort of moral reck­on­ing and frac­tious inter­per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al rela­tion­ships that can only come from a coun­try which has been divid­ed for over a cen­tu­ry. These old wounds take time to heal, and per­haps any last­ing trau­ma that’s derived from them is best analysed from an out­side point of view, a van­tage point that the McDonagh’s share. Now, with the younger of the two’s lat­est film, The Ban­shees of Inish­erin, in cin­e­mas, those old wounds just might be reopen­ing. But as they say, laugh­ter is the best medicine.