{"id":5094,"date":"2014-08-05T13:12:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-05T20:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/?p=5094"},"modified":"2014-08-05T13:12:55","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T20:12:55","slug":"gleeson-mcdonagh-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/poptheology\/2014\/08\/gleeson-mcdonagh-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"A Match Made in Heaven…Even If It Looks Like Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last week, I had the good fortune to interview Brendan Gleeson and John Michael McDonagh around the release of their film,\u00a0Calvary<\/em>. Unfortunately, I didn\u2019t get to speak to them at the same time, so I\u2019ve tried to blend them\u00a0together into something of a\u00a0conversation. There are big\u00a0spoilers throughout, so if you care about that stuff, check it out after you see the film. You can also read my review of the film here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ryan Parker: What was your experience of religion (broadly speaking) growing up?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brendan Gleeson: I make it a rule to not talk about my religious beliefs now because I don\u2019t want people to think I have an agenda in the work that I do. However, I had something of a normal upbringing. My family was Catholic, and I attended Christian Brothers Schools, so I didn\u2019t have to do too much preparation for this role. It was all very familiar to me.<\/p>\n

RP: So ministers\u00a0like Father James were\u00a0familiar to you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: In a general sense, yes. It was all encapsulated by my parents\u2019 faith, which was simpler then. You either go with the church or not. What the church said really was gospel. That\u2019s an older sense, and I tried to bring that to this role, even though it was a more modern setting. I had an inspirational mentor in school in Pat Grogan. When I looked back on [Calvary<\/em>], I realized I was probably flying a flag for him.<\/p>\n

\"image-742e5e8a-e7f6-41b9-95a5-f800ce753c7b\"<\/a>
Father James (Brendan Gleeson) dispenses communion in Calvary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RP: Is there a place for people like Father James in our world today? Because in the film, it\u2019s plain to see that, even though the villagers know they\u2019re a mess, they certainly don\u2019t want his help. They\u2019d rather spit the communion back in his face, so to speak.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: I don\u2019t know if you have siblings, but I grew up with an older brother, and I would go at him until he broke. I think there\u2019s something to that with Father James. The members of the community pour their pain on top of him and try to justify it by making him crumble, but secretly, they don\u2019t want him to. If he breaks, then they have nothing to hope for. Cynicism, disillusionment, and despair carry a caveat at the end of the film. Reconnecting with what is\u00a0good would be impossible without him.<\/p>\n

John Michael McDonagh:\u00a0Yeah. I\u2019m not certain about this, but my feeling is that maybe a lot of people who would have entered the church or the religious institution [do so] because, generally speaking, they want to help people and help their community. We may find that those people, because of all the scandals attached to these institutions, now do other, different forms of community work or spiritual work [rather than aligning]\u00a0themselves with a specific creed or religious institution.\u00a0 But those impulses to help mankind have different outlets. Possibly that\u2019s a good thing. I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

RP: So there is hope?<\/strong><\/p>\n

JMM:\u00a0I think so. Let\u2019s take a specific character in the film like Dylan Moran\u2019s rich man Fitzgerald, who\u2019s making supercilious comments all the time about how much money he\u2019s got. He\u2019s being quite confrontational on the face of it, and he\u2019s kind of an appalling human being. But if you notice his journey in the movie, by the end of it, he\u2019s the only who\u2019s actually asked for help. He comes to see Father James on the cliff face at the end, and we realize that he\u2019s actually suffering. All the masks have fallen. So if a character like that can asked to be helped and saved, then hopefully there\u2019s hope for everybody. Take Aiden Gillen\u2019s doctor. He\u2019s really abusive. At the same time, he\u2019s helping people in his community. He\u2019s saving lives as a doctor. The important story he tells towards the end about the child whose operation went wrong\u2026the subtext of that could be that he was really affected by that when it happened. [\u2026] If an act like that can turn [you]\u00a0into a negative person, another act can turn you\u00a0back. And the priest tells\u00a0Veronica that no one is a lost cause. At the end, in the conversation, he says it\u2019s not too late. So I think that\u2019s a subtext throughout the movie, and it\u2019s there in all the characters.<\/p>\n

BG:\u00a0Yes. [Father James]\u00a0lives on in\u00a0his daughter. They have connected even though he abandoned her twice. And SPOILER O\u2019Dowd\u2019s character picking up the phone wasn\u2019t a foregone conclusion. But having him do that has us staring up at the end of the film rather than down.<\/p>\n

\"Screen-Shot-2014-07-31-at-9.30.44-AM\"<\/a>
John Michael McDonagh and Gleeson on the set of Calvary.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RP: Brendan talked about the scene at the end where Fiona visits the prison. Did you ever envision a different ending?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

JMM: I always wanted to have a montage of the characters in that kind of It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> sense. Once Father James is gone, what does that mean to everyone else. We\u2019re not sure what it means. Some of those characters will carry on being the same as they are. But some may have changed. But I also wanted it to end on a moment of hope. I felt the film was somber enough. I wanted the final shot to be kind of a grace note. One thing I did change to make it more hopeful was when she motions for the killer to pick up the phone. In the original draft he doesn\u2019t, but again, I wanted the film to end on a much more hopeful aspect. Shooting that scene on the beach, the performance was so emotional that I wanted to keep it going. [The killer has]\u00a0destroyed the priest, but he\u2019s also destroyed himself. But by picking up the phone, he may have still saved himself.<\/p>\n

RP: Could you say a bit about the state of the villagers in the film? As I watched the film, I began to see them as these larger-than-life characters almost representative of major moral and ethical shortcomings.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JMM: They weren\u2019t trying to be symbolic of anything. If you try to create a work of art, if it\u2019s rich and dense enough, the audience can get whatever meanings out of it they want. It should be open to multiple interpretations. I think, you know, I do tend to create heightened, non-naturalistic characters. They are all a little idiosyncratic and eccentric. It\u2019s interesting, since I\u2019ve been doing this press tour, in Chicago I spoke to an Episcopalian minister and in Dallas a Methodist minister, and they both couldn\u2019t understand why the characters were being referred to as heightened, because they meet those sorts of people every day. To them it was realism. I was kind of happy to hear that. Maybe I shouldn\u2019t talk about these characters as being heightened. Maybe you meet any one of these any day of your life. And these ministers were both saying that people are very angry, and they\u2019re trying to help people who are very angry toward them and church institutions, which I found interesting because you\u2019re telling a story that you hope is parochial, but you also hope it is universal.<\/p>\n

RP: Calvary\u00a0<\/em>can easily be seen as an indictment against the church, but the inclusion of these rowdy villagers seems to point to something else.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: It is the church, but it\u2019s not just the church. It\u2019s the individual as well. The individual has a responsibility to not slip into disillusionment and despair, and you see that throughout the film.<\/p>\n

RP: There are so many sharp lines of dialogue that convey the themes of the film. In fact, it\u2019s one of my favorite aspects of both this and\u00a0The Guard<\/em>. Is there one that means the most to you or that conveys more of what you were getting at with this film?<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: Father James\u2019 line, \u201cForgiveness is highly underrated.\u201d That\u2019s a big one. It seems that the church has forgotten the essentials and become obsessed with minor rules and regulations. That would be the one.<\/p>\n

JMM:\u00a0I really like the dialogue between Fr. James and his daughter Fiona in the confessional. It\u2019s a philosophical discussion, but it\u2019s also a discussion between a father and a daughter and the daughter is in a lot of pain. It also hints at the fact that they\u2019re both literate, erudite people, very intellectual people. She is her father\u2019s daughter. I think that then resonates at the end, that she takes on the mantel of her father really. I like that scene.<\/p>\n

RP: I\u2019d like to shift the conversation a bit and talk about your larger body of work, which, in many ways, is similar to your brother\u2019s (Martin McDonagh) in its darkly comedic tone.<\/strong><\/p>\n

JMM: I like writing really dark scenes. I like the scene with Domnhall Gleeson [in Calvary<\/em>]. There are some very very dark things being said there. I like broadly humorous scenes as well. I like the scene when Dylan Moran takes down the painting and does something awful to it. Obviously the whole film is very tonally comic and tonally tragic. I like writing both of those sorts of sequences. When I\u2019m sitting alone in a room three or four hours a day writing a script, I\u2019m trying to keep myself interested as much as some prospective audience, so I write scenes that amuse me in one way or another.<\/p>\n

\"inbruges3\"<\/a>
Gleeson as Ken in In Bruges.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RP:\u00a0Putting this film in conversation with\u00a0The Guard<\/em>, I am a big fan these film because they provide fully realized worlds.\u00a0By that, I mean that when the narrative promises something, the characters follow up on it. There are no easy ways out. I think this is also true of Martin\u2019s work in\u00a0In Bruges<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a07 Psychopaths<\/em>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: Every character in these films could have a separate story all their own. [The McDonaghs] are brave in where they bring us. I was in a short with Martin, and I thought he was taking it too far. He told me, \u201cAll my work is about love.\u201d Now, there might be hard stuff around it, but it\u2019s all about love.<\/p>\n

JMM:\u00a0Yeah exactly. I take that as a huge compliment. The main thing for me is I\u2019ve found a lot of movies, after the first 10 minutes, you know what the ending will be. You may as well not sit through the rest of the movie. Hopefully, I think with myself and my brother\u2019s movies, because of that tone that switches back and forth between the comedic and the tragic, the audience is slightly wrong-footed all the time, so they\u2019re never quite sure where it will go or how far it will go. We both have that in common. The conclusion of [Calvary<\/em>]\u00a0was a sort of discovery. I always knew that was going to be the conclusion, but I never had the identity of the killer until two-thirds of the way through. That\u2019s when you\u2019re kind of working things out as you\u2019re getting to that stage. I always know what I\u2019m going to do at the start of a film and what I\u2019m going to do at the end, so I never waver from that course.<\/p>\n

RP: Three films, In<\/em> Bruges,\u00a0The Guard<\/em>, and\u00a0Calvary<\/em> have similar settings and similar lead characters. Brendan seems to always play characters that see the world as it really is, or sees something that no one else sees.\u00a0<\/em>Both these lead characters and the writing behind them seems to serve a priestly function.<\/strong><\/p>\n

BG: Yes. There\u2019s an arc to what actors do. [\u2026]\u00a0I try to find humanity in all the characters I play. No one sees themselves as a devil. If I\u2019m playing a good man, I try to find the faults in that character too. I just try to make them as human as possible.<\/p>\n

JMM:\u00a0Brendan likes to say that art makes you feel less alone. I\u2019ve always felt that was a good quote.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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