Calvary

“Calvary,” the impossible-to-categorize new picture directed by John Michael McDonagh, reaches for a philosophical grandeur it doesn’t quite grasp. It is, in fact, a film about reaching for a grandeur seemingly beyond one’s grasp.

Brendan Gleeson stars as Fr. James Lavelle, a country priest in contemporary Ireland. The film strives to be both character study and whodunit, without fully committing to either. When a parishioner uses the partial anonymity of the confessional to declare his plans to kill Fr. James the following Sunday, our story gets its ticking clock.

The parishioner claims to have been abused by a priest. It wasn’t Fr. James, but the parishioner doesn’t care. He’ll take it out on James in one week’s time. Fr. James tries to figure out which of his parishioners this is, but James is a lethargic detective. McDonagh is looking to derive texture rather than tension from the mystery. The film’s opening scene, which sets all this up, almost amounts to a kind of head-fake.

As we meet the townspeople, we begin to be charmed by them. Fr. James’s unusual path to the priesthood — he’s been widowed, has an adult daughter (Kelly Reilly), and joined up as an older man — gives him a unique perspective to which some respond well, while others not so much. The “crisis of faith” trope is made fresh here. Fr. James is frustrated with the other representatives of his religion, not wracked with guilt about his own spiritual failings.

Neither fully drama nor fully comedy, each scene seems to be a distraction from the story’s mystery elements. Fr. James would prefer not to think about his life being under threat. The movie grants him that space.

Thematically, “Calvary” is about forgiveness, redemption, and blah blah blah. But I think McDonagh is less interested in these ideas as ideas and more interested in how these ideas manifest as internal conflict within his characters.

Which is why nearly everything that works about “Calvary” can be credited to Gleeson.

The 59 year-old Irishman is one of those actors who can seemingly do anything and never sucks. Gleeson is a palpably intelligent actor whose work has this wonderful modesty to it. He trusts the audience to see what he’s doing without him having to run a bright yellow highlighter across his lines. “Calvary” is both anchored and buoyed by his brilliance. We never see the technique — just an emotionally exhausted priest.

McDonagh juggles numerous characters, giving each their spotlight, then fading them out. Not all these characters get paid off (despite an ill-advised montage in the third act), but they’re well drawn. With his characters, McDonagh walks the line between eccentric character and caricature as well as any writer-director around.

“Calvary” is not perfect. It reminds us that few things in life are. It’s also not derivative and doesn’t chicken out with its ending. That’s praiseworthy.

“Calvary” — THREE STARS

Directed by John Michael McDonagh. Rated R. Irish Film Board, Lipsync Productions, Octagon Films, and Reprisal Films. Distributed in the U.S. by Fox Searchlight Pictures. 100 min.

Ida

“Ida,” the new movie by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, is a work about the past, a black-and-white drama set in 1961 Poland. Yet, for all its austerity, it burns with the immediacy of a freshly struck match.

In a convent on the Polish countryside, Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is about to take her vows. She is told by her Mother Superior that as a former orphan she has one living relative, aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza), whom she must visit. It’s not five minutes into the film before Anna has left the convent and is knocking on her aunt’s door.

Yet these austere expository scenes take their time, as if Pawlikowski is a dealer laying cards before us but remaining stone-faced, not wanting to tip his hand.

Aunt Wanda is an unforgettable character, played with intelligence by Kulesza. The offhanded way Wanda tells Anna that she is, in fact, a Jew, mirrors the way her Mother Superior told her she was an orphan. Anna’s identity is a set of cold facts others just lay on her, not something under her control.

A decade prior, Wanda was a Stalinist prosecutor and judge, even sentencing some to death. But Anna finds a Wanda who is an alcoholic who sleeps around. (Just as Wanda tells Anna about her Jewishness, the man who had spent the night in Wanda’s apartment can be heard exiting.) Each woman sees in the other a potential for herself.

In her aunt, Anna sees a woman who has achieved her full potential, both professionally and, yes, sexually, and who feels little shame about either. In Anna, Wanda sees her own deceased sister as well as the prospect of her own redemption. Unlike Wanda, Anna is ignorant of her past, not freighted by unsavory memories.

That the film becomes a kind of road trip movie is almost ironic. Together, Anna and Wanda try to locate their family’s grave site. Betrayed by their neighbors and slaughtered for being Jews, Anna, who was an infant, was the only one spared. In a subtle bit of screenwriting, Wanda becomes a quasi-prosecutor again, interrogating descendants, attempting to broker a belated justice.

Each scene in “Ida” is its own little gift. When Wanda and Anna quarrel, one has the sense that each woman really is arguing with herself. There is even a quasi-“Persona” effect when at the climax the two women seem to meld identities.

Anna discovers she is both Jew and Catholic. She discovers she has the capacity to choose the convent or the outside world. She savors both and fears both.

The film explores these concepts deftly, without seeming like it’s “exploring” anything. The black-and-white within a box-y 1:37:1 frame makes the images look like tiny photos in a locket, things precious to be held close.

“Ida” — FOUR STARS

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Rated PG-13. Canal+, Danish Film Institute. 80min.

Under the Skin

Jonathan Glazer fielded questions after a recent screening. “We just dropped Scarlett [Johansson] into Scotland and filmed her,” he said.

Glazer’s third film, the brilliant “Under the Skin,” is a fresh variation on the old Mars-needs-women story. Johansson is outstanding as an alien in disguise who lures men into her van for otherworldly purposes. In addition to actors playing scripted scenes, Glazer filmed Johansson’s real-life interactions with random Scotsmen, who rarely recognized the star. Small GoPro HD cameras were installed inside the van.

The result is a singular achievement of hard sci-fi. Glazer, who previously directed “Sexy Beast” and “Birth,” contrasts the rainy hills of contemporary Scotland with the psychedelic, dreamlike environs of the alien’s lair. Both a sci-fi and a horror film, “Under the Skin” eschews the usual tropes.

Even the way the film is shot refuses to reach for the Hollywood cookie cutter. In a harrowing scene that takes place on a rocky beach, imperiled characters fighting furious waves are shot at a distance, with Kubrickian detachment. A Jason Bourne film would shoot this with constant shaky-cam silliness and quick-cut editing. Glazer demonstrates how there’s nothing scarier than a camera sitting dead-still on a tripod.

The beach scene is one of no fewer than three scenes that are so disturbing and well directed they feel made by an advanced alien race. Glazer balances the stunning visual effects work with the needs of his slowly unfurling story. The visuals are spectacular without ever becoming mere spectacle.

The inspired direction succeeds on the back of Johannson. This is her best performance to date. Though only 29, she’s been a movie star a long time. Here Johansson demonstrates new depth and, for the first time, the poise of a veteran screen star who knows what powers her face carries even when expressionless.

What separates “Under the Skin” from, say, the “Species” franchise is an air of mystery. Michel Faber’s source novel answers some of the questions left hanging by the film. Why is this alien doing this? What’s her backstory? What does she think about?

Glazer says such answers were not as interesting as the questions. Moreover, I would say, the dangling questions make for a better story in the hands of a good director. In “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Kubrick doesn’t bother to explain things Arthur C. Clarke made explicit in the novel. Nothing makes the mind reel faster than imagining what the answers might be.

Thus this film opens itself to endless interpretation. It’s the old “what does it mean to be human” story. It’s a statement on feminism. On the objectification of celebrities. On the banality of human existence. On the allure of human existence. Zizek will have a field day.

“Under the Skin” asks us to consider questions without insisting upon answers. It’s also genuinely disturbing and fascinating along the way. Thus it stands tall next to the bulk of Hollywood genre pictures, which have long been pickled in their own vacuousness.

“Under the Skin” — FOUR STARS

Directed by Jonathan Glazer. Rated R. Studio Canal. 108 min.