 |
| Courtesy of Arrow Films |
They welcome the
boy indoors who provides Frederic with a chance to reinvigorate his own faith while
trying to redeem the soul of the newfound houseguest, meanwhile Ethel continues
taking a maternal liking to the boy.
Still, something is amiss and soon the preacher finds himself in
existential crisis as his own faith is tested while trying to comprehend the
gravity of the situation unfolding before him.
Character actor turned writer-director Mark O’Brien, best
known for his role in the action-survival thriller Ready or Not, and his
feature film debut in the director’s chair The Righteous is another one
of those films involving a broken elderly home who is visited upon by a
mysterious young stranger who proceeds to turn their already shaky worlds
inside out.
As with Dennis Potter’s Brimstone
& Treacle and more recently Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a
Sacred Deer, the young, beautiful but likely dangerous invader all but
completely burrows his way into the hearts, minds and souls of the unsuspecting
main characters. More to the point, is
the mercurial youth who wandered onto their Newfoundland establishment a
servant of God or simply the Devil himself?
Bergmanesque in its themes of faith, humanism and
spirituality with a darker Tarkovskian edge, this black-and-white widescreen
effort is a minimalist chamber piece that largely exists within the household
of Frederic and Ethel. The high-contrast
cinematography by Cast No Shadow cinematographer Scott McClellan is
painterly and picturesque but mostly trained on intimate close-ups of actors
Henry Czerny and actor-director Mark O’Brien engaged in heated, tense
conversation. The moody original score
by Andrew Staniland helps to augment the sense of woodsy countryside isolation
felt by the characters but again is secondary to the film’s dialogue exchanged
with increasing ferocity by the three main actors.
--Andrew Kotwicki
