.. footnote as it’s not at the bottom of the page ) there are some interesting parallels with another of my favourite movies ‘Ikuru”, the far more understated yet more touching work, by the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa.
If I have any regular readers they may, hopefully, have realised that I am not a cynic but rather a romantic realist. Like many people of limited intelligence and even less knowledge I wish for some certainty and comfort in a world which is implacable in its impartial, random cruelty. I am mildly bemused that only now after a few thousand years of evolution that a few of our species are now beginning to realise that our evolution has made us rather poorly evolved and crass. It is not surprising, but rather depressing, that we produced Einstein and Stalin in the same generation. Some see the infinite and others murder thirty million.
Richard Dawkins wrote in ‘River out of Eden’, “Nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous, indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”
Faith can only exist with the most profound doubt, the deep investigation of the uncertainty of belief. Many would crucify or behead us on their certainties; stupidly conceited in the unexamined conviction of received bias and doctrine. As a sweeping generalisation gods have been created to fill the void in our existence, an echo of our own need, longing and ignorance. They are ultimately ourselves and therefore become as cruel, demanding and despotic as humanity.
Most who have religions have it as a certainty, an institutionalised state of being usually mirrored in a social institution of intolerance. Intolerant of uncertainty and intolerant of other beliefs. Monotheism has created more cultural bigotry and hatred than we can credit given that the god of Muslims, Christians and the Jews is the same. You may have the same god but I will kill you if you don’t worship him in the same way as I do. That, to any rational mode of thought, should be odd.
If religion has a place it as an investigation of psychological reality; its role may be to ask what is the meaning of this extraordinary universe that we live in and the meaning of the intensity of our own existence. That the question may be of the type that has no answer is beside the point.
If atheists can be said to have a favourite cleric mine would be ex-bishop Richard Holloway who said as his belief in God ebbed away “I ended up with this funny existentialism – that there may be no God in the universe, but let’s live as though there is, and even if we are wrong it will be a glorious way to be proved mistaken.”
The protagonist of ‘Calvary’, Father James walks in a small Irish world of intolerance, lies, cynicism and callous indifference. In a world in which the Catholic Church is treated with at least indifference and usually contempt - a state which the church in Ireland has largely deserved particularly of late with its record of child abuse - he remains pugnaciously good. He does not love the church but to him there is a core message of love that despite everything he remains true to.
The key interchange in the ‘Calvary’ occurs between the priest Father James and Theresa a French woman who has lost her husband in a road accident.
“In situations like this one, people are shocked. The randomness of it. They curse God. They curse their fellow man. They lose their faith in some cases.”
“They lose their faith? It must not have been much of a faith to begin with. If it is so easy for them to lose it.”
“Yes, but what is faith... for most people is the fear of death. It's nothing more than that. If that's all it is, it's very easy to lose.”
Father James has the option of not being killed on the beach at Sligo but chooses to go there and allow it, albeit with some reluctance, to have it happen to him. He knows that the only person that it makes a difference to is himself. And yet, as the only good man, a man who questions and fights for and against his belief there is, almost reluctantly, no option.
Even though there may be no God in the universe, he lives as though there is, and even if he was wrong it was a glorious way to be mistaken.
In Ikuru Kanji Watanabe is a minor bureaucrat with a pointless council job. His wife has died and his children are waiting for his inheritance. He discovers that he has terminal cancer so before he dies he does the only thing that he feels that will gives his life some significance which is to build a children’s playground. An iconic scene from the film is from the last few moments in Watanabe's life, as he sits on the swing at the park he built. As the snow falls, we see Watanabe gazing lovingly over the playground, at peace with himself and the world.
The meaning of a man’s life is the meaning that he chooses to give it, not that which others may choose to impose.