"Priest"
                             A film review by
                           Linda Lopez McAlister
                           on "The Women's Show"
                         WMNF-FM (88.5), Tampa, FL
                              April 22, 1995

    Yesterday I went to see "Priest"--not an easy thing to do since the
pressure from the Roman Catholic hierarchy to bury this film seems to be
working and it's only being shown at one theater in Tampa, the Main Street 6,
and two in Pinellas, the Movies at Pinellas Park and Movies @ Clearwater. The
ironically named Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights is also urging
Catholics to boycott the Disney company for distributing this film through its
Miramax subsidiary. How sad, how foolish. What better confirmation could there
be of the truth of the film's main premise: the hypocricy, indifference,
close-mindedness, and utter lack of love and compassion of much of the
institutional Church. For this film (which, by the way, won best film award at
the Berlin Film Festival), directed by British director Antonia Bird, is
itself deeply religious and one of the first I know that explores openly and
honestly what priestly existence is like in the contemporary (Western) world
and tries to deal with real issues confronting the priesthood such as
celibacy, homosexuality, lonliness, lack of institutional support, and how to
apply the neat abstractions of doctrine in the messy and complicated real
world of human suffering.

   My partner's stepfather is a man who was a Catholic priest in small,
isolated, rural Midwest parishes for thirty-five years. I know from his
experiences and those of his friends who have also left the priesthood or been
dumped when their usefulness is over, something about how heartless and
"uncrhistian" the institutional church can be. In the copies of the liberal
National Catholic Reporter he used to send us I recall reading a report of a
study that estimated some 40% to 60% of Catholic seminarians are homosexuals,
something the Vatican strives mightily to deny.

  "Priest" touches on all these issues as it chronicles the experiences of a
pious young priest, Fr. Greg Pilkington (played by Linus Roache), who is
assigned to replace an older priest who has been unceremoniously dumped from
his position in a poor inner-city Liverpool parish. Right out of seminary, he
is a doctrinally conservative and prudish young man who is offended by the
"undignified" behavior of his affable fellow parish priest (Tom Wilkinson) who
frequents karaoke bars with the parishoners. Fr. Greg's disapproval turns to
condemnation when he finds out that this same Fr. Matt is sleeping with their
attractive Black housekeeper, Maria Kerrigan (Cathy Tyson).  There's a great
scene in which she sets Fr. Greg straight about some of the sexist assumptions
he makes about her agency in this affair.  As Fr. Greg gets to know
his parishoners and learns their secrets in the confessional, he soon finds
himself enmeshed in conflicts between his vows of secrecy and his need as a
compassionate human being to try to do what he can to stop people's suffering.
Having estranged himself from Fr. Matt by his own judgmental nature, he has
nowhere to turn for comfort and support. One night, after having had a drink
or two at a wake, he removes his Roman collar and heads on his bicycle for a
gay bar and has a sexual encounter with a man named Graham (Robert Carlyle),
for which he is later wracked with guilt because he believes himself to have
sinned against God by so doing. When his own torments and failings finally
make him less judgmental of Fr. Matt and they can begin to talk about all
these things, the debates they have reflect the debates raging within the
Catholic Church today between those who stress the absolutism of official
doctrine and those who stress Christ's message of compassion and forgiveness
and love for all humankind.

   "Priest" is beautifully acted, very intense and moving. We've come a long
way from the sugar-coated Bing Crosby/Barry Fitzgerald priest fantasy movies
of my childhood. This one is ever so much more respectful and devout a film.
If you're not a Catholic, it's worth seeing because it's a good film. If you
are a Catholic, lapsed or otherwise, it will be of intense interest to you and
will make you think long and hard about the Church and how it goes about
serving its people.  But See it soon; the so-called Catholic "civil
libertatians" are doing everything they can to censor it.

   For the WMNF Women's Show this has been Linda Lopez McAlister on Women and
Film.
   Copyright 1995 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please do not
reprint this review without the permission of the author.