Calvary + The Karate Kid Effect (Film Review/Ideas & Thoughts)

Film critic Gene Siskel once said that when it comes to film, your opinion ultimately boils down to whether you liked the movie or didn't.  Roger Ebert and his thumbs up/thumbs down system helped to express their overall opinion on a film, with a thumbs up=liked & recommended while a thumbs down=disliked & suggested to avoid.  While the thumbs up/thumbs down system works, its simplicity fails with giving individual pros and cons on a film that perhaps was good yet flawed, or one that was bad yet possessed some virtues (which is why it was important to read/listen to their reviews as well).  The point of my ramblings stem from this very review of Calvary, a film that possesses beautiful cinematography, lovely settings, solid performances from its actors and some wit to go alongside its premise.  Yet when it comes to my overall experience, I must confide that the film gets a solid thumbs down.  It may not start off this way, but by the end Calvary becomes a dark, depressing and mean-spirited film; a downward spiral of unpleasant bleakness that takes away from the positives I've stated above.  It’s sad, depressing and made me rather bitter by its conclusion, leaving a sour aftertaste that stayed long after seeing the film.

Calvary’s plot is an intriguing one:  A Catholic priest named James (Brendan Gleeson) is confronted during a confession by a mysterious man who’d been raped as a kid by another priest.  The man confides that he seeks revenge and that while he knows Father James is a good man he’s going to kill him none the less, leaving James with a week to sort out his life before it happens.  Father James himself is one of the few religious people left in a community full of bitter, spiteful residents towards the church.  James knows who the mysterious man is, yet neither confronts him early nor informs the police.  Furthermore, James’ somewhat estranged daughter (who he had before becoming a priest) comes to visit during what could possibly be his last week on Earth.

One of the main issues with Calvary is it’s pestered with multiple clichés that distort what should have been a spiritually intriguing, mystery plot.  The cliché that Calvary suffers the most from is what I refer to as the Karate Kid Effect; a cheap film tactic used to increase a film’s drama and/or bleakness so that the finale leaves its viewers with a more significant impact.  The general idea is to make every character (save for a few) act unnaturally cold, mean-spirited, cruel or villainous towards our film’s protagonist.  The film creators use the effect to increase its “protagonist against the world” feeling in hopes to make the ending where our lead character succeeds (or doesn't) all the more impacting.  The problem here is despite its finale being more satisfying, the film’s viewers must endure through a majority of bullying, cruelty, and other frustrating events towards our generally good-natured protagonist. 

There’s usually around 3 (4 at the most) characters exempt from the effect, usually being the mother, mentor/buddy and love interest.  Of course there are ways of making the Karate Kid Effect work in the film’s favor, usually involving making the film a comedy and/or having the protagonist be a jerk or villain (examples include Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, A Clockwork Orange, etc…).  The Effect works worst however, with the combination of the nice protagonist and the serious drama/action genre; creating an infuriating result where everyone is out to get the protagonist for generally irrational reasons.  The Effect has been used way before the 1984 Karate Kid, but is the most prominent example of its use, with EVERYONE being a complete a$$hole to poor “Daniel-san” save for his mother, Mr. Miyagi (mentor), and Ali (love interest).

The main issue with the Karate Kid Effect is not only how unpleasant the cruelty is to watch, but how entirely unnatural it feels; here are two examples from The Karate Kid:

1. Daniel makes a friend in an area he’s just moved into; there he chivalrously fights our antagonist Johnny, who clearly outmatches Daniel (though he does get a punch in).  Next day Daniel goes to school only to be made fun of by his “friend” who has inexplicitly turned antagonistic because Daniel got beat up by a Karate black belt.  Daniel never makes another high-school friend (save for Ali) and is shown contempt, mockery, and disregard by the students in the school.
2. Daniel goes to talk to Ali who’s at a fancy dance with Johnny (who also likes Ali).  Her parents love the bullying, drug using, arrogant Johnny (who Ali detests) because…he’s blonde?...and sneer like snobbish 1910 aristocrats when Daniel (aka “the poor boy”) tries to talk to her.  Daniel accidentally spills something on him and LITERALLY EVERYONE in the room (who are mostly middle-age adults) turn to maliciously laugh at a young teenage who was a little clumsy.

See how The Karate Kid Effect can be a problem?  Luckily The Karate Kid has one of the greatest student-mentor relationships ever put into film to help balance out its issues.  Likewise, both The Karate Kid II and Karate Kid remake tweaked the formula so the Effect was no longer a major issue; unfortunately Calvary wasn't so lucky, here’s three noteworthy examples from the film:

1. Father James is at a pub with the rest of the community; the mysterious man who wishes to kill James sets his church on fire, which can also be seen from the pub’s window.  James is unfortunately looking the other way while this happens…yet nobody else (many of who can clearly see the church burning) bothers to tell him.  Finally the bartender (who’s been watching the church burn this whole time) nonchalantly informs James that “your church is burning”.  Of course it’s too late to put it out, yet as Father James looks on the fire in horror chanting “why didn't anyone say anything” the rest of the community looks on in amusement and joy (two even decide to go have sex from viewing it).
2. Father James walks outside to find that his beloved Golden Retriever’s neck has been sliced open…the Priest of course cries in horror.  When he’s finally confronted by the mysterious man James asks him why he killed his dog, to which the mysterious man replies he didn’t and that he would never harm an animal.  This means that possibly someone else in the community hated James enough to murder his dog out of spite (we never end up finding who killed the dog, meaning it was added for no other purpose than to make Father James’ life even more hellish).
3. Father James has been having a bad week seeing how his life’s been threatened, his church has been burned down and his dog’s been brutally murdered…why not add a few more misfortunes!  The film has the community mocks his beliefs in the cruelest of ways, tell him awful stories simply to make him mad, brag about sinning (adultery, physical abuse, etc…) in the most gleeful of ways, and be straight up discriminating towards him (the bartender refers to him as “you people” and doesn’t like James in his bar).

The way the community treats Father James is downright bleak to watch.  The only nice characters to James are his daughter, his old writing buddy, a very religious woman who befriends James, and the altar boy.  Everyone else is an a$$hole whose sole purpose is to make James’ life drearier and depressing so his choice of whether it’s worth standing by his beliefs and confronting the mysterious man (which is also cliché since you know he’s going to stay yet the film pretends he might actually leave) is all the more significant.  This increased significance has a cost however, creating a town of monsters and cold-hearted people that the protagonist (and viewers) must unpleasantly endure; which leads to a strange issue I do not often have with modern day films.

There never appears a single decent people in the film who is an atheist, agnostic, or someone no longer connected with a religion.  The only respectable people in Calvary are Father James (who stays true to his religion), the writing buddy (who clearly has religious ties with James), the religious woman, the altar boy, and James’ daughter (who may or may not be religious, but is certainly still connected via her father).  Everyone else is non-religious and is one (or more) of the following: a crook, felon, abuser, heavy drug user, adulterer, jacka$$, a$$hole, apathetic person, racist, discriminator, murderer, serial killer, cannibal, and/or animal killer.  There’s not a single non-religious people who’s shown in a positive light; whether or not that was intentional remains to be seen, the unfortunate implications however are as clear as day.

(MAJOR SPOILERS) The overall theme I got from Calvary is that the world’s gone to hell; perhaps that’s true, but who wants to watch a film entirely about that.  I look at sad films such as The Pianist and even there, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel; a spark of hope that even the worse of humanity has some good to give.  There’s none of that here in Calvary; sure Father James is shown as a good, selfless person who gives up his own life to try and save someone, but in the end what does his sacrifice amount too?  The community of jerks haven’t changed, the mysterious man has crossed the moral line of no return, the daughter’s lost her father, and the repenting millionaire has no one left to talk with now.  His sacrifice is bleak, hollow and depressing, similar to how the film itself becomes.  I’m sure there are those who can tolerate or even enjoy the Karate Kid Effect, and for those people Calvary may end up being a film they can appreciate.  As for myself, I found it a cold, unwelcoming experience that left me feeling upset the more I thought about it…and the more I thought about Calvary, the more I disliked it.