For his sophomore feature length film Calvary, writer/director John Michael McDonagh stretched far from the carefree nature of his debut, 2011’s The Guard, and delivers a heavy-handed life drama, wrapped in the guise of a “whodunnit” — though, it’s more like a “who-will-do-it.”

As one of two priests in a small Irish settlement, Brendan Gleeson spends the full running time of Calvary with the weight of a death threat on his head. Chosen to pay the price for what others have done, this man who is known only as a pillar of goodness is put to the test in a world of people who just don’t seem to care.

We sat down with Gleeson and McDonagh for two exclusive one-on-one interviews.

BRENDAN GLEESON

First of all, thanks for everything you do, especially movies like this. It’s great to be able to actually look forward to a film, nowadays.

Brendan Gleeson: Great, great. Thank you.

Can you talk about building a character like this [Father James Lavelle]? For the most part you’ve portrayed him as this kind of pillar of greatness, or goodness, we’ll say. The problem is, he has flaws. So where’s to find that balance for creating a character like that?

Brendan: Well, [he’s] like a brave man who isn’t afraid, is just an idiot, you know? You have to know fear to overcome it — to me anyway. So for this guy to have had a life prior to the priesthood was hugely influential in forming him — for him to have failed in that life, which he kind of did, in a number of accounts.

In terms of his alcoholism and failing to come to terms with that? The grief over his wife, the loss of his wife and then losing his daughter in the process, without ever even realizing it. He has to confront that in himself, and it makes him more easily able to understand other people’s shortcomings and disillusionment, and all those things. I think he couldn’t have been a hero without those flaws, really. Somebody who is squeaky clean is rather dull, when it comes down to it, and I don’t think all that realistic.

Sort of like that idea of how you become the drug czar, if you’ve never done a drug yourself.

Brendan: I mean, you don’t have to have seen everything to know how to deal with that, or to make decisions about what you think about it. But I just think, having that other life, he was more compassionate, because he understands his own limitations.

Not just in terms of carrying the film, alone, but obviously having such a heavy weight to the subject matter — does it become emotionally draining to do something like this?

Brendan: I was wasted at the end, to be honest with you. You know, everybody with this script had a very personal engagement with it. So all these characters meant something to the people who played them, and the actors they got were superb, frankly, they were so finely cast. So it meant that the intensity level of this film was absolutely relentless, the kind of pressure you were under.

I tell a story that was absolutely true. It was the Friday of the third week, and Aidan Gillen is inside the bathroom with Orla O’Rourke [refereeing to a scene in the film] snorting coke, and I come in to go to the loo, and I don’t judge them, I just turn on my heel and go back out, and they’re sniggering, “Oh, it’s purely medicinal,” and just kind of carrying on. It was my last shot on that Friday afternoon. I couldn’t believe it. The hare was coming around the bend, the traps were about to open, and I was free for a little bit of head space, over the weekend. And then John said, in one of the takes — in one of the last takes — he said to Aidan, “Just call him a name, as he’s going out.”

So we do the take, I come in, I see they’re snorting coke (but I didn’t say anything), walk out, and he says, “Prick,” just as I’m closing the door behind me. I almost went in — my hand was on the door. And I was like, “You know what? Say it again.” I was like that… I kind of had a little bit of red mist for a second. And that was the third week. (laughter) And that’s absolutely true. It absolutely was tough.

Now, maybe it’s because of the growth, from time, or the subject matter, but have you seen anything different from John [Michael McDonagh] as a writer and a director on this?

Brendan: Well, certainly the subject matter. With this one, it’s all script. The kind of raw emotion, and the large philosophical questions, the big ones, of life and death… It’s just a different film, and it’s deeper in its treatment.

It seems to me that there are only a few filmmakers or writers out there, people like John or the Coen Brothers, you know, who just have a way with dialogue.

Brendan: Yeah.

Is there something that draws you into a project; makes it easier for you to just say, “No matter what the subject matter is, I want to do this because I kind of get to really express a level of speech and dialogue”?

Brendan: Yes, but there is a vigor with every aspect of it; it’s not just the dialogue. The dialogue is exquisite, and extraordinary, and harsh, and funny, and and honest. But then you’ve got themes, and the honesty of approach there; the way that they cast the thing. The way the directorial care is taken, the view of it, the whole Andrew Wyeth-type canvas that he paints on.

The vigor of the way that he goes about his work is undeniable. It has to reach a certain standard of application and talent. You know, I think it’s kind of bordering on genius — but don’t tell him that. I like working with John.

What are your preparations for something like this? Do you actually go and talk to the priesthood, and talk to somebody, or victims, or anything like that?

Brendan: I didn’t really have that problem because I grew up as an Irish Catholic, and I knew this stuff, inside and out. And there were a couple of little things about the mass that we just checked out, procedurally. [McDonagh is] quite easy with spreading stuff across a couple of generations, you know, stuff that we’d remember as Catholics that is no longer current. If it’s cinematic, you stick it in there. We did the same with The Guard. He had these old phones that people don’t really use anymore, stuff like that. But if he thinks something is visually what he wants, he blurs the lines a little bit.

Yeah.

Brendan: And so, for stuff like that, there’s only a certain amount of research necessary, because we’re going to [use] what we remember. So the research wasn’t really that hard — it was more about trying to find the soul of the guy.

JOHN MICHAEL MCDONAGH

First of all, again, thank you for everything you’ve done so far. It’s nice to have somebody out there I know are going to make product of a certain quality. Still to this day, when people come up to me and ask me, “What’s a good movie I haven’t see this year?”, I say, “Forget this year. Go see ‘The Guard’, if you haven’t seen ‘The Guard’.

John Michael McDonagh: Right. Yeah, Thank you.

[Regarding the opening dialogue of Calvary], did that go through certain iterations? Did you feel that it was maybe too weighty, one way or the other, when you first started getting that down?

John: No, I always had the opening line. I knew that I wanted to get across the terror of abuse, in a verbal way, so it’s very specific. See, I actually planted images in people’s minds that they might not want to be there. And then in the shooting of it, I shot it two different ways. I had a big close-up, and I had a medium shot. I knew I was probably going to use a big close-up. And, obviously, I’m hoping that Brendan Gleeson comes through for me. Which he does — I think there were only four takes.

It’s my big pre-credit sequence, you know? It’s trying to jog people, pin them to their seats and say, “Listen, if you’re expecting The Guard 2, you’re not going to get it.” And this is the way the movie’s going to go. So you’re setting up everything in that one scene — every thematic concern.

I never really think about the ramifications of what I’ve written; I don’t censor myself, or think that I’ve gone too far. That’s for producers to say to you.

I never really think you went too far. I was just thinking because, I like to go into movies as blind as I can — especially if I loved something you did — I want to go in [not knowing] what to expect.

John: Yeah.

And it’s like…not that you would laugh, it’s just so shocking, and you don’t even know how to react to it at first.

John: You know, at Sundance, we did get laughs at the first line. And then people went, “Oh, what the fuck? What am I laughing at?” And then he responds with a kind of sarcastic comeback, and then the audience laughs at that. And then they go, “Where are we now? Are we supposed to laugh or not?” And then, obviously, it becomes very, very somber, in that scene. But then the next scene after the credits is with Brendan, and the really naive priest, and they start talking about felching. So then, and that’s a purely comic sequence, in a way, so then I was hoping, by that point, five minutes in, the audience should be thinking, “We don’t know where we are. We don’t know where this is going to go.”

But let’s face it, we all read news article — you know, “Malaysian Airlines Crashes,” and we all go, “Oh, that’s terrible.” And then, you know, we go and get a coffee. Or with Boko Harum, all those girls that were kidnapped, do you remember, and the day after it was all these memes, all these hashtags, blah blah blah. All these kids…those kids are still missing! And what’s happening now? Nothing. It was hip for two days, and now it’s no longer hip. So what’s happened to those kids, now? Right?

So I think that’s common to every human being, that there’s only… Chris O’ Dowd’s character says, “Not everyone can carry the weight of the world, Father.” So, you know, if we go through our daily lives taking on board all the suffering that’s happening everywhere in the world, we’re just going to commit suicide or lie in bed all day, you know, taking drugs. I wouldn’t say that it’s a failing of a human being to detach, because how do you deal with that all the time? Most people’s lives are a struggle. There’s only so much you can take on board.

I remember when we were talking about The Guard, I mentioned that I liked the fact that you kind of play against certain stereotypes, specifically when it comes to dialogue or what people expect. I noticed [in Calvary] that there was a theme of people saying , “you don’t know what that really means,” or, “That doesn’t mean what you think it does.”

John: Yes. Again, the Chris O’ Dowd scene, when he said, “The black guy. Sorry, I mean colored. Slip of the tongue.” I mean, that’s a reference to those people — specifically, an Irish thing — who don’t know what they’re supposed to say. They know that they should be PC, and then they get it completely wrong, even though they’re trying to be nice. So it’s all that; we’ve always been told about the way we should speak, and there are all these genuinely sort of decent people trying to not be offensive, and then they’re being offensive.

Obviously I like to do dialogue that wrong-foots people, which counteracts what you might be expecting. A lot of those characters in both movies are very unusually, let’s say, erudite people who seem to reference lots of literature, and they come up with epigrammatic quotes that you wouldn’t assume these people would come up with. I think that harps back to the screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s that I loved. I adored these fast-talking characters who would just come up with really witty stuff all the time, and I’m trying to bring that sort of thing all the time. I’m against all that kind of naturalistic acting, where it’s like, “Would you like a cup of tea?” “Yeah, I’d love a cup of tea.” It’s like, fuck off!

With Brendan, obviously, he’s amazing, always has been, always will be, and he carries this film. However, the supporting cast, both via people everybody knows and people who are not as known — every character in this is portrayed by somebody who is really talented.

John: Yeah. I’m a big cinephile, so what I’m doing in the casting is, I got in loads of these supporting characters — Irish actors — who would be familiar to an Irish audience. I knew that when we’re releasing in Ireland, there’s all these Irish actors, and people will go, “Oh, I love these Irish actors.” And then when it goes to America, audiences are like, “Who are these guys we’ve never seen before?” And then bring in Isaac The Bank Clerk from Jim Jarmusch’s movies. Then there is Marie-Josee Croze, and M. Emmett Walsh — just to make the film feel like a big, expensive movie, and not just a parochial small town Irish film. That was the intention with the casting.

I think, obviously, the success of The Guard means that when you send the script out to those actors, they’re going to read it quicker. And also, I think — without blowing my own trumpet, as I’m going to blow my own trumpet — those characters might not have a lot of scenes, but the scenes are quite dense and quite rich, and there’s a lot going on. [The supporting actors] — let’s say, Marie-Josée Kravis, I think she’s only got about three scenes, but they’re very pivotal scenes in the film. She would obviously see that, and see how rich those scenes are. Sho she said, “Yeah, I’ll come over and do it.” She doesn’t need to be in a low-budget Irish movie, you know? I guess it’s the writing, and she knows she’s going to be opposite Brendan.

The way I approach it — I used to write novels that never got published. I sort of see myself as a failed novelist. Then, when I look at the films now, they have a certain “novelistic” quality. All those important characters are very rich — almost to the point where you could follow Aidan Gillian’s atheistic doctor into his own movie, and see what he gets up to in one day. That’s the way I approach it. I could just go off with the gay hustler, I could go off with the corrupt cop. That’s a rich character — he’s obviously helping people in his community, but he’s doing coke, he’s attacking the local priest — he’s a spectacularly awful person, who’s also saving lives. That’s quite an interesting character. It would make a great movie on its own, but that’s not the movie I wanted to make.

Have you ever heard from or gotten any responses from actual victims?

John: No. I haven’t gotten any responses from the Catholic Church either. I know, I don’t read a lot of sort of comments on websites, you know, when there’s a review of the film, or whatever. Every now and again there will be somebody saying, “This doesn’t deal with the suffering properly.” I mean, talking about following a character, I could tell the story all from the point of view from the guy who’s the killer and what he has suffered. But to me, to do that properly, I would do it in a kind of Gaspar Noe Irreversible way. I would show everything that happened to him. I don’t want to make that movie; it’d be too depressing. It’d be a horror movie. If somebody else wanted to do that movie, that’s fine, but that’s not what I want to do. And so, if somebody’s criticism is that you didn’t make that movie, that’s a valid criticism — but I’m never going to do it. Let somebody else make it.

Yeah, of course, that’s not what this is supposed to be.

John: Yeah!

But at the same time, obviously, there are going to be people, whether they speak out or not, who find some sort of connection…

John: Yes, exactly!

…one way or another.

John: But then you can’t…. There’re people who hate Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, which to me is one of the greatest films ever made. There are people who hate Citizen Kane. There is no movie that everyone’s going to like. So you have to make the movie you want to make, and let the cards fall where they may.

You have a history of loving certain types of films, stories, and literature. Were there certain things you were drawing from for atmosphere?

John: I was looking at a lot of Bergman movies going into it. Winter Light was a big influence on it. Watched a lot of Robert Bresson movies. There’s an American movie, True Confessions, Robert De Niro and Rob Duvall, directed by Ulu Grosbard, which is a really underrated De Niro performance. We’re kind of in a time now when great acting performances, basically…you have to be really angry. (laughter) You have to smash up the steering wheel of your car to show what a great actor you are. In True Confessions, De Niro basically brings everything back to an almost placid face, but there’s a lot of things going on.

One of my favorite actors is Alain Delon… In Jean-Pierre Melville’s movies, where it appears that he does nothing, obviously there’s lots of stuff going on. You can read lots of stuff in his eyes. So I was trying to get back [to this], especially with the lead performance, with Brendan — we were talking about this, about not doing that “I’m a wild, angry man, you’ve upset me so much, I’m going to start punching a wall, you’ve upset me so much, and this is acting.” But that’s the way the Academy seems to reward performances.

I’m with you. Subtlety is a lot more powerful than anything else.

 John: Yeah!

How are things going on War On Everyone, your next film?

John: Michael Pena. Garrett Hedlund. I got drunk at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and I spilled the beans that I was talking to Guy Pearce…

Yeah, I heard that.

John: You know? We haven’t…. There are no contracts in play. He said he wanted to do it, but we still haven’t met to talk it through. So I was kind of shooting my mouth off there when I was pissed. So far, his agent and his manager haven’t come down to have a go at me about it, so we’ll see. Hopefully Guy will still do it, and we’ll see what happens. And hopefully that will be at the beginning of next year. That’ll be my first American movie.

Yeah, should be exciting.

John: We’ll see how that goes. Garrett Hedlund is shooting, what is it called, Pan? He’s playing Hook, Captain Hook, or whatever. So I’ve been drinking a lot and playing tennis with Garrett in London. So, that’s been all…I’ve been winning a lot at tennis. It’s going really well.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache and a contributor to Den of Geek.