Summer of Cinema/ Calvary and Pig

A couple of teachers watch too much TV over the summer holiday

During the school year, I tend to watch TV shows more than movies. They’re shorter and tend to require less attention. It’s a nice thing to have in the background while cooking, cleaning, etc. Most of these shows are “20-minute laughs,” as Netflix likes to tell me, although I’ll sneak in the occasional 40- or 50-minute episode series as well. The downside is that I only watch movies once or twice a month. Summer is the time to rectify the disproportionate consumption of sitcoms over dramas.

This June and July, Jacob Collins and I are living in the ancestral home in Tennessee. We’ve spent the first few weeks making an ambitious list of movies and TV shows for the summer. I doubt we’ll get through the whole thing, especially if we keep adding two films every time we log onto Netflix to watch one. But hey, there’s always next year.

Throughout our Summer of Cinema, we’ll leave reviews of some highlights right here on Our Present Age.

Calvary (2014 : 1h 42m)

R for sexual references, languages, brief strong violence and drug use

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

Starring Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly

Calvary offers a brutal vision of post-Christian Ireland. In the opening scene, a parishioner tells Father James of his abuse at the hands of a catholic priest and announces that he will kill Father James in a week. The rest of the film leads up to the appointed day. We quickly discover that no one in the parish takes the priest or Christianity seriously. Of the other priest assigned to the parish, Father James says, “You should have been an accountant in a law firm.” As his daughter visits and the threat of death looms over his head, Father James wrestles with what faithful ministry looks like in such circumstances.

The Christological reading of the film is clear: a priest, assured of imminent death, mocked and rejected by his own people, continues his ministry. There is even a Garden of Gethsemane moment, where Fr. James considers leaving his parish and starting over somewhere else. Calvary asks what faithful ministry looks like in a post-Christian society. The church is an object of hatred. As the church’s representative, Fr. James bears the mockery, distrust, and rejection of his parishioners, offered in the ironic jabs of contemporary discourse.

This is a tough film, so look up a review first. The sexual scandals in the Catholic Church are clearly in the background. It would be easy to set up the film as a judgement against the church or priesthood, but McDonagh does not take that route. His portrayal of Christianity through Fr. James offers a kind of hope which is rare in cinema. I would recommend Calvary to anyone considering the call of Christian ministry (which, as a good Theopolitan, I believe applies to all Christians).

Pig (2021 : 1h 32m)

R for language and violence

Directed by Michael Sarnoski

Starring Nicolas Cage, Alex Wolff, Adam Arkin

Based on the plot summary, I thought this was going to be a weird Nicolas Cage version of John Wick. Cage plays Rob, a recluse who lives in the Oregon forest with his truffle-hunting pig. His pig is stolen, and he goes to the city to find it. That’s basically it.

Except that the minimalist film turns into a beautiful story about love. We learn fairly quickly that Rob’s wife is gone. He has a tape recording from her which he starts and then quickly stops. Amir, the man who comes to collect the truffles each week, gets the door slammed in his face. Only the pig receives Rob’s affection. Then the pig gets stolen. Rob is forced to rely on Amir for help, and the two form a beautiful, albeit odd, relationship. As they search through Portland, the pieces from Rob’s past come together.

I suppose Pig could be John Wick retold as a drama…the pig clearly has a connection to Rob’s wife, as Wick’s dog is connected to his wife. Instead of going on a killing spree, Rob and Amir pull strings in the restaurant world where Amir works and where Rob was once a prominent name. The pig could easily have been a MacGuffin, except that the story is a story of love––for friends, for family, and even for a pig.

There’s also this beautiful cover of a Bruce Springteen song: