by Robert Bouffard, Editor

John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time. Starring Brendan Gleeson, it follows a small-town Irish Catholic priest as he visits his parishioners and reconnects with his daughter after a threat is made against his life. It’s a deeply emotional film that deals with some heavy, religious subject matter. So while I don’t love McDonagh’s other two films (The Guard and War on Everyone) nearly as much as Calvary, I still love Calvary enough to give anything he does a chance.

Enter, The Forgiven, which tells the story of David and Jo Henninger (Ralph Fiennes and Jessica Chastain), a couple who go to their friend Richard’s (Matt Smith) villa in Morocco for the weekend. The Henningers get lost on the way and accidentally hit a teenage boy with their car, killing him on the spot. Richard brings the police right over to the villa to sort everything out, and they do, but such things aren’t so quickly moved on from.

This isn’t necessarily a thriller or mystery, but it often has the tension of one. Calvary’s central question is about forgiveness, and so is The Forgiven, as the title suggests. While Calvary is a much smaller, tender, and character-focused tale, The Forgiven uses its tension to paint a bleaker picture of humanity, while having something meaningful to say on the topic of forgiveness. 

About halfway through the film, David leaves the villa to go with the family of the boy he killed. Richard, Jo, and everyone else he leaves behind at the villa are wary of his exit, because they’re essentially invading in a land they don’t care about or understand. But as they’re looking out for their own safety as well, they pull back their efforts in attempting to get David to stay, essentially splitting the film into two parts: one that works and one that really tries to work.

David’s trip into the middle of the desert of Morocco with absolute strangers is compelling every step of the way. He travels with the boy’s father, Abdellah (Ismael Kanater), and an interpreter, Anouar (Saïd Taghmaoui), and there are measured, quiet scenes, or simple dialogue scenes where the true question of David’s fate hangs over every second. You really lose yourself in the film’s central thematic question, and are drawn into the very specific tone of these scenes.

Conversely, following Jo back at the villa doesn’t work nearly as well. Its function is clear — to make the story multidimensional and for the viewer to invest in David’s potential forgiveness — but the execution isn’t quite there. It might have worked better in Lawrence Osborne’s 2012 novel of the same name, but if it indeed does, something was certainly lost in translation. Chastain, Smith, Caleb Landry Jones, and Christopher Abbot are all very good in their roles, but every time it cut to them, I was less interested in their blatant, shallowly portrayed cultural insensitivity, and was more interested in getting back to David’s story as soon as possible. There was potential here, but it just didn’t seem like McDonagh was nearly as invested in this certain plot line.

Probably too far into the film, I was starting to get quite worried, and wondered whether the film would be able to say anything particularly novel. But by the end, it brings its main and most compelling message clearly to the forefront: forgiveness is for those who want it. 30 years into his career, it shouldn’t be a surprise to say this, but Fiennes is the biggest reason The Forgiveness works at all. His subtlety and the dimensions he brings to David are what the entire film hinges on, and he’s devoted from the start. 

The Forgiven is an inconsistent film, filled with consistently good work from the names you’d expect to put in good work. McDonagh knows how to utilize his actors, and Fiennes and Chastain know how to command the screen. The movie’s worth a watch for what the three of them alone bring to the table.

Score: 7/10

You can follow Robert Bouffard on Twitter and Letterboxd