Priest (film)

Infobox Film
name = Priest


caption = DVD cover
director = Antonia Bird
producer = George Faber
Josephine Ward
writer = Jimmy McGovern
starring = Linus Roache
Tom Wilkinson
Robert Carlyle
music = Andy Roberts
cinematography = Fred Tammes
editing = Susan Spivey
distributor = Miramax Films
released = September 12, 1994
runtime = 98 mins USA
105 min UK
country = flagicon|UK United Kingdom
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0110889|

"Priest" is a 1994 British film, made in Liverpool, which was first shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. It is a drama directed by Antonia Bird and starring Linus Roache. The film depicts a Catholic priest as he struggles with the conflict between the conservatism and celibacy of priest life with his own homosexual desires, and between his desire to uphold the confidentiality of a child molester's confession with his desire to reveal the abuse.

Plot

Father Greg Pilkington (Roache) is a Roman Catholic priest struggling between his calling as a priest in an inner-city parish, his personal traditional conservatism and his homosexuality, while dealing with the sanctity of the confession in regard to knowledge that he obtained in confession by a Mr. Unsworth (Robert Pugh), a local family man, who is sexually abusing his teenaged daughter Lisa (Christine Tremarco). When Mrs. Unsworth (Lesley Sharp) walks in on her husband molesting her daughter, she and other parishioners are furious that the priest did not break the Church policy. Father Greg, however, argues that he could not reveal confidential information supplied in confession. Father Greg tries to engineer situations where the father's actions could be discovered, such as sending the mother, his housekeeper, home unexpectedly in the hope that she would catch her husband. However, when Father Greg is arrested for having sex with Graham (Carlyle), his boyfriend, in a parked car, the parishioners reserve themselves, while some defend the Church policy against homosexuality. Fr. Greg is supported by a heterosexual priest that defends him in front of the Church ("Do you really think God gives a damn what men do with their dicks?") leading to a brief verbal shouting match about what the Bible says about homosexuality. At the end of the film, when parishioners boycott Father Greg when he gives out the Eucharist, lining up instead to receive communion from the other priest, one person breaks the boycott: the young woman who had been sexually abused.

Reaction

Critic Roger Ebert gave the film one star out of four, a rating he reserves for films he feels are of the poorest quality. Calling the film "shallow and exploitative", he criticized the lack of exploration between Father Greg and Graham, and how it was used solely to attack the policies of church celibacy. In a similar vein, he also criticized the use of the confessional seal as a story element, arguing that the same confidentiality between a lawyer and his client or a doctor and their patient would not be thus used. He argued that the inability of Father Greg to reveal Unsworth's sexual abuse is factually inaccurate, as Unsworth was not did not regret his crime, and intended to continue it, giving the priest the right under Church law to notify the authorities. [ [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19950407/REVIEWS/504070308/1023 Roger Ebert. Review of "Priest". suntimes.com. April 7, 1995] ]

Notes

External links

* [http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/movie.aspx?m=93521 MSN page for Priest]
* [http://www.culturalianet.com/art/ver.php?art=4308 Spanish page for Priest]
* [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19950407/REVIEWS/504070308/1023 Roger Ebert review]
*imdb title|id=0110889|title=Priest