Absolution

Absolution seems like it would make a better novel than a movie. It's a decent story. I like the twisted ending and unexpected plot turns even if they sometimes feel a bit convoluted. It has pretty good characters and is decently acted. Its primary downfall is in taking so long to get to the suspense.

At the center is a Catholic boarding school for boys. Benjy is a promising young man until he befriends a drifter camping in the woods (who would later play a fallen priest in X Files: I Want to Believe). Benjy's new friend suggests that it might be fun to play a prank on Father Goddard. The priest has been Benjy's mentor, but that doesn't stop the boy from confessing fabricated sins of sexual misconduct and murder to him.

When Father Goddard discovers the deception he is reluctant to believe the next tale of murder, but the corpse he finds leads him to take threats made against other schoolboys seriously especially when one of them goes missing.

The trap is this: since the misdeeds were told to him during confessions he is forbidden to divulge any of the information. He is tormented by what he knows and what he feels is his inability to do anything about it. It's a kind of battle of wills with the priest's well-intentioned vows being used against him.

I'm not Catholic so I don't know that much about the nature of confessions. Is a priest really so tightly bound to silence if he believes lives are at risk? Conversations with Catholic friends suggest probably not, but even if that's not entirely true it's presented as fact in the movie so I guess what's important is that Father Goddard BELIEVES it to be so. The movie does a fairly good job of creating a sense of desperate frustration in him.

We spend a lot of time early on getting introduced to the school, its inhabitants, and the drifter. We spend a lot of time in classes and study sessions. The suspense begins late with the instigation of the first minor prank and then builds slowly towards the lives of schoolboys being at risk. It does finally pick up steam, but a stronger ambiance through the first portion would have helped a lot.

As the suspense builds in that last portion it culminates in the kind of twisted revelation scene you might expect from a mystery movie – the Sherlock-Holmes-explains-the-solution kind of scene. Depending on how the story strikes you the conclusions could be convoluted or confusing, but I found them mostly interesting and satisfying though some parts of the plot could be stronger.

I enjoyed the actors. Father Goddard (Richard Burton) is particularly well played. The parts of the students (some might recognize David Bradley) and the drifter (Billy Connolly) are well done. I wasn't as impressed with some of the supporting cast, but their contributions are small.

MORALITY:

After some of the PG movies I've seen recently I'm surprised this one is rated R. There is very little, mild strong language, no sex, and no nudity. Benjy does confess some sexual and violent acts, but he is not particularly graphic or vulgar.

We get only short glimpses of corpses which aren't particularly disturbing. There is one brutal scene of violence, but all other violence is implied.

SPIRITUALITY:

The story centers around the Catholic faith. We see priests in their positions of spiritual leadership and boys learning about faith and the Bible. There is no presentation of salvation and little that could be taken as a true spiritual struggle. It would be easy to see the story as coming from the point of view of contempt for the church and the institution of confession. I would even go so far as to say that it puts forth the idea that darkness in the soul is more powerful than spiritual faith, but I'd say such a perception is subjective. Ultimately it is mostly just interested in being a mystery that attempts to affect the viewer on some level.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

There are some weak plot points which hold the story back a little; overall, though, I find the story pretty good. Perhaps I've been tainted lately by watching too many movies that feel like they were written by 5th graders. But while story and acting get thumbs up the lack of ambiance for such a large part of the movie hold it back a lot, not to mention the poor technical qualities that sometimes come with such an obscure, older film. I say absolutely check it out if you run across it but don't put a ton of effort into getting your hands on it.

#Absolution