PRIEST (1995)

It's no great trick to raise the ire of the Catholic Church, and PRIEST (Miramax, R), a startling new drama about sin, faith, and tolerance, appears, in its early scenes, to be a deliberate provocation. In a downtrodden section of working-class Liverpool, Greg Pilkington (Linus Roache), a handsome young priest, his face choirboy smooth, his eyes cold with rectitude, arrives at the presbytery where he'll be living as he assumes duties within his new parish. There he meets Matthew Thomas (Tom Wilkinson), a fellow priest and boarder who, it's immediately clear, is less than a model clergyman. Matthew, when he isn't delivering sermons that are thinly veiled leftist screeds, is an earthy, boozing libertine who is sleeping with his housekeeper, Maria (Cathy Tyson). What makes his casual blasphemy doubly jarring is the casualness with which Priest surveys it. The movie seems to be saying (with a shrug): This, folks, is what Catholicism has come to-a religion in which priests have stopped pretending, at least to themselves, that they're saintlier than other men. Greg is outraged at his new comrade's behavior, but the scolding rejoinders he offers seem rigid and sanctimonious-smug in their parochial-school purity. Later, he officiates at a wake, only to learn that the locals are less interested in his soothing words of uplift than they are in seizing another opportunity to get drunk. All this, and the movie hasn't even dropped its big bombshell. One evening, Greg removes his shirt and collar, dons a black leather jacket, and heads into the seamy night. Entering a gay disco, he proceeds nervously to pick up another young man and go home with him. The sex scene that follows is discreetly photographed (chests kissed, hands feverishly grasped), but, in this context, the conventional movie iconography of passionate lovemaking carries a dramatic jolt. It turns out that Greg, beneath his stern shell of piety, is a slave to temptation. Yet he remains an ardent Catholic as well, a man moved to the priesthood by his devout belief in the teachings of Christ. The real shock of Priest is that it's anything but cynical (or anti-Catholic). Written by Jimmy McGovern and directed by Antonia Bird, the movie, which was made for British television, is intense, full- blooded, and, at times, archly funny-a look at what faith has come to mean in a world where no one can agree anymore on the rules of righteous behavior. What McGovern and Bird suggest is that Greg is a better priest, with a fuller experience of humanity and faith, precisely because of his war with desire. He understands firsthand the spiritual torment that Catholicism is meant to redress. In the confessional, Greg listens to the frightened outcry of a 14-year-old girl, Lisa Unsworth (Christine Tremarco). A pretty, pale creature with a mouth curled into a frown of self-loathing, she tells him that her father has been sleeping with her. Later, Mr. Unsworth (Robert Pugh) enters the confessional himself and, in a remarkable scene, offers not a confession but a defense of incest-a lewd, insidious testament to the self-justifying nature of evil. (What makes it even more disturbing is that the two performers look like father and daughter.) Greg yearns to do anything possible to stop what is clearly a nefarious case of abuse. As a priest, though, he can't allow himself to break the seal of the confessional. This spring-loaded plot device may be familiar from Hitchcock's I Confess, but Priest uses it to dig inside a blistering emotional paradox. Greg, in acting out his homosexual desires, has violated his priestly vows, but by honoring the sacredness of the confessional he violates his most compassionate instincts as a man. And where, for God's sake, is the religion in that? Bird stages scenes inside the Unsworth home that are candid and overpowering; in evoking the trauma of incest, they underline the supreme urgency of Greg's dilemma. And Roache's performance, which at first seems almost too stoic and gloomy (he occasionally recalls Jeremy Irons at his aristocratic worst), grows more fervent as the movie goes on. It reaches a moment of epiphany when Greg faces a crucifix-the same body of Christ he admits he finds erotically enticing-and rails in tears against Jesus for the very purity that lifts Him above the human race. Bird works with impressive fluidity and atmosphere, but there are moments when the movie's small-screen pedigree shows. The connection between Greg and his lover (Robert Carlyle) never develops in a convincing way; we miss the moment it passes from a one-night stand to a true relationship. And when Greg's gayness becomes a public scandal, the movie gets a bit well, preachy. It's too eager to shoehorn the complex issue of homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church into a generic liberal mold. (Matthew glibly dismisses the historical foundation of celibacy within the priesthood, and that's that.) Still, Priest's true message-its plea for compassion-is an intensely moving one. Like its torn hero, the movie knows the agony, the burn, of sin, and that gives it the authority to question those true believers who would deign to judge without understanding.