'Calvary' cast on set in The Carlyan pub in Rush
It may be a typically dull and dreary day in north Co Dublin but the small, seaside town of Rush is alive with activity. In off the main street four or five heavy duty lorries are parked beside a number of trailers and temporary dressing rooms.
Men in high-visibility vests, equipped with buzzing walkie-talkies roam up and down the street, past The Carlyan pub and on down to a newly-built temporary wooden church. John Michael McDonagh’s ‘Calvary’ is in town and excited locals are trailing the streets, pen and paper in hand, hoping for a glimpse of the film’s stars, Chris O’Dowd, Aidan Gillen, Kelly Reilly and, of course, Brendan Gleeson.
It’s the reunion of Gleeson and writer and director McDonagh, following the huge success of ‘The Guard’, that is the cause for much of the excitement. From the chatter among the locals to the media invitation to visit the set, comparisons aplenty are made to McDonagh’s surprise 2011 hit. The priest Gleeson is playing in ‘Calvary’ is, we are told, “the flipside to ‘The Guard’s Sergeant Gerry Boyle” and, like ‘The Guard’, the film is set in the west of Ireland. Cast and crew may now be stationed in Rush, but the bulk of the five-week shoot has taken place in Co Sligo.
Described as a dark, comedy-drama, the plot of McDonagh’s ‘Calvary’ follows Gleeson’s priest, a good-natured man who has become increasingly shocked at the behaviour of the locals in his small country town. After being threatened during confession, he’s forced to battle the dark forces closing in around him.
“I think that it’s got the best ensemble cast that’s ever been assembled for an Irish movie,” McDonagh says from inside The Carlyan pub where he’s just completed filming a pub scene with Gleeson, Gillen, O’Dowd and Reilly. The rest of the ensemble cast he speaks of include a number of well-known Irish names - from Dylan Moran, David McSavage and Pat Shortt, to Domhnall Gleeson and David Wilmot.
“I wanted it to feel, not only Irish, but sort of international as well,” continues McDonagh as he explains his casting decisions. “So you’ve got Isaach De Bankolé, who’s been in ‘Casino Royale’ and Jim Jarmusch films, and Marie-Josée Croze, who’s been in ‘The Diving Bell & The Butterfly’. So I don’t want it to feel like a small film, or a parochial film. I want it to feel like a film that could play on an international circuit.”
Cutting a relaxed figure, the English-born filmmaker says he always had Gleeson in mind for the lead role. Indeed, the idea for ‘Calvary’ stemmed from a bar room conversation between the two towards the end of shooting ‘The Guard’.
“It was the last night in Galway so there was a lock-in in the pub,” McDonagh remembers. “All the cast were there, and that, and at a certain point in the evening I said ‘I bet that loads of people are planning scripts about bad priests and dealing with the whole subject in a really depressing way’. I thought that it would be good to do the opposite – to do a film about a good priest - because it’s quite difficult to do films about good people. Usually, the hero is flawed in a major way or they’re an anti-hero.
“Brendan just said, drunkenly, ‘I’ve always wanted to play a good priest’. So that’s where the idea hatched. The editing of ‘The Guard’ went on so long that I wrote the script during it. So when that was finished I had the next one ready to go and Brendan really liked it. So then you’ve already got your lead actor.”
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