John Michael McDonagh
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Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
Directed by Robert Bresson
influenced Calvary (2014)
Themes Visuals
McDonagh, inspired by Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest , blends the bitter melancholy of that film with themes that will resonate with especial force in McDonagh’s native Ireland.
In Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951), an obvious inspiration here, a rural community treats a young priest with disdain because he is young, effete and has a high-minded view of religion entirely out of keeping with the grind of their daily lives.
McDonagh himself has described his film as Robert Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” “with a few gags thrown in.”
The picture is mostly structured as a series of snappy conversations Father James has with the members of his parish, who abide him with a bit more humor (but still much of the disdain) expressed by the parishioners in Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest .
Taking a conscious step away from the ironic frivolity of The Guard, McDonagh has mentioned Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest as an influence on Calvary .
In fact, McDonagh maintains a tone much more in keeping with Bresson’s “Diary of a Country Priest” or Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Léon Morin, Priest” than the churlish score-settling of “Philomena.”
Much like McDonagh's brother Michael's "In Bruges" (which also starred Gleeson), "The Guard" gleefully mixes strong violence with deliciously funny dialogue, with the characters taking time out of the crime plot to comment on the oddities of words like "liquidate" or "anomaly."
The film is awfully funny, but like his brother's "In Bruges," it also has notes of melancholy and brutal, murderous realities.
Written and directed as a first feature by John Michael McDonagh (older brother of “In Bruges” playwright/filmmaker Martin McDonagh), it’s more comedy than thriller, since the bad guys (Liam Cunningham, Mark Strong, David Wilmot) are revealed early on and, despite an inexplicable penchant for quoting Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, their demise seems inevitable.
In his efforts to keep up with his prolific sibling, John McDonagh was savvy enough to enlist well-traveled actor Gleeson (Gangs of New York, two or three Harry Potters, and John Boorman's wonderful The General), whose role as Ken in Martin McDonagh's In Bruges is a latter-day pinnacle of harp movie magic.
Rookie writer/director McDonagh has a short resume — he’s best known as the brother of Martin McDonagh, the director of In Bruges.
It’s a fabulous debut for McDonagh (brother of playwright Martin McDonagh, who wrote and directed the not-dissimilar “In Bruges”).
If you can imagine the whimsicality of "Local Hero" crossed with the dark, British Isle ruralness of the "Red Riding" trilogy if its criminal elements had immigrated from "Fargo," you'll have an idea of McDonagh's deft tonal touch.
I could just as easily suggest that "The Guard" is "Hot Fuzz" by way of "Local Hero."
But odd details, like the kid riding a bike with his dog on a leash, and the quaint landscape are also reminiscent of the whimsical Scottish comedy "Local Hero."
But there’s also a marvelously odd vein of sneaky humor running through it, along with an unpredictability that keeps you glued. In terms of scope, it recalls Martin Scorsese’s Silence, while its taunting questions about the limits of piety call to mind John Michael McDonagh’s criminally underseen Calvary.
Like Montgomery Clift in Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, James feels that the sanctity of the confessional prohibits him from revealing what he has been told.
What follows is an existential detective story of sorts, or perhaps an Agatha Christie whodunit by way of Hitchcock’s “I Confess,” in which the priest goes about his coastal village, tending to his flock while a seven-day clock ticks quietly away in the background.
It is said to be influenced firstly by a drunken conversation between Gleeson and McDonagh but also Hitchcock’s I Confess.
Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some!!" is being positioned as the "spiritual sequel" to "Dazed and Confused," the director's exuberant 1993 ode to high school life in the 1970s.
Gleeson is pitch perfect as Father James, as stoic as Gary Cooper in High Noon, so innately upstanding that his attendance on the day is never in doubt.
There are hints of High Noon, the classic Gary Cooper oater, in that dramatic scenario, especially considering the less-than-positive stance both films take on the virtue of small-town people.
At times, Gleeson’s character resembles Gary Cooper in High Noon: a man who refuses to turn his back on his town even though they have abandoned him.
Thus begins a sort of detective story, the kind you could imagine Robert Altman engaging with — something like his gumshoe ramble The Long Goodbye, say.
I thought a lot about Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye while watching this movie, and with that, a lot about detective movies in general.
These are not the jolly reprobates with charming brogues from The Quiet Man or the fabled soothsayers ready for another donnybrook Barry Fitzgerald used to play.
The expatriate American, de rigueur since John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), is elderly novelist hermit Gerard Ryan (M.
We don’t see priests like this in the movies anymore (you might have to go back to Karl Malden in On The Waterfront for another example) as they’re so often paraded on-screen as punchlines either representing hypocrisy or serving as shorthand for pedophilia.
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
influenced War on Everyone (2016), The Guard (2011), Calvary (2014)
Themes
John Michael McDonagh stepped out from the shadows of filmmaker young brother Martin McDonagh, who’s crafted such cult modern classics as In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths , in 2011 when he debuted The Guard .
I’m such a huge fan of both of the McDonagh boys — playwright turned writer-director Martin (“In Bruges”, “Seven Psychopaths”) and his brother John Michael (“Calvary,” “The Guard”) that I’m willing to write-off “War on Everyone” as a pastiche that didn’t pay off.
We saw glimpses of this in Seven Psychopaths, but War On Everyone puts the icing on the cake in terms of cringe.
John Michael McDonagh is, incidentally, the brother of director/playwright Michael McDonagh, the man responsible for Seven Psychopaths and Pajiba favorite In Bruges .
Martin McDonagh went from the great In Bruges to the indulgently amusing, if lesser Hollywood underworld caper Seven Psychopaths.
Enter John Michael McDonagh, brother of fellow writer-director Martin McDonagh ( In Bruges , Seven Psychopaths ) and known for brusque Irish affairs like The Guard and Calvary .
From his breakthrough starring role in John Boorman’s “The General” (1998), Gleeson has displayed a rare gift for conveying unsentimental warmth.
The film was shot by Larry Smith, cameraman on Stanley Kubrick 's dreamlike "Eyes Wide Shut" and more recently the garish, hypnotic "Only God Forgives," and so the images have a dynamic quality to match the forceful storytelling.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
Directed by Martin McDonagh
influenced by Calvary (2014)
Great support comes from Aussie Abbie Cornish (as the chief’s wife) and Sam Rockwell (as one of the cops); British writer/director Martin McDonagh ( Seven Psychopaths; In Bruges ) injects his signature brand of dark humour into the proceedings (a trait he shares with brother John Michael McDonagh, who made The Guard & Calvary ) to create an absorbing portrait of how ignoble the quest for justice can be and how moral foot-stomping can often signal that something important is being overlooked.
His brother John Michael McDonagh seemed to have him beat as a filmmaker, especially after Calvary .
In that sense, Three Billboards nudges close to the moral complexity of Calvary , a criminally underappreciated gem made by the director's brother, John Michael McDonagh.
He makes an effort to discuss the threat with the town constable (Gary Lydon), but that worthy is entertaining the town’s resident rent boy (Owen Sharpe), who affects a hilariously awful dese-and-dose New York accent, apparently absorbed from repeated viewings of “West Side Story.”
A leather-clad gay hustler (Owen Sharpe) who seems to be doing a Noo Yawky imitation of every Jet in “West Side Story.”
Calvary devilishly satirizes all those charming Irish comedies of the 1990s (Waking Ned Devine, a prime example) that feature a rogue’s gallery of eccentric village characters pulling good-hearted tricks and romantic schemes, and where the parish priest is invariably a benign presence.
The episodic structure can be wearying, but the suspects comprise a fine collection of character actors given gleefully inappropriate things to say, from a still-kicking M. Emmet Walsh (Blood Simple) as an American writer to Chris O'Dowd (coming off his Tony-nominated work in Of Mice and Men) as a wife-beating butcher, Dylan Moran (who oughta be a household name on these shores as he is at home for Black Books) as a misanthropic millionaire to Aidan Gillen (Game of Thrones) as a nastily cynical doctor, not to mention that adulterous mechanic from the Ivory Coast (Isaach De Bankolé of The Limits of Control).
And as the film’s insistence on its own profundity goes on, I find myself longing to escape into one of its more spontaneous and surprising cinematic relatives, like John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary.
Brendan Gleeson’s formidable rural Irish priest in Calvary is a recent example.
What follows is partially a modern-day, small-Irish-town The Last Temptation Of Christ, and partially an Agatha Christie mystery in reverse, less whodunit than who’s-going-to-do-it.
In an interview with The Independent, John said that he hated theatre and was jealous of his brother’s film success until he made The Guard, where Gleeson played a bumbling policeman.