“The Club” – not one you’d want to join [MOVIE REVIEW]

7. Father Ramírez (Alejandro Sieveking), Father García (Marcelo Alonso), Sister Mónica (Antonia Zegers), Father Silva (Jaime Vadell) and Father Ortega (Alejandro Goic). Courtesy of Music Box Films.
7.Father Ramírez (Alejandro Sieveking), Father García (Marcelo Alonso), Sister Mónica (Antonia Zegers), Father Silva (Jaime Vadell) and Father Ortega (Alejandro Goic). Courtesy of Music Box Films.

Father Ramírez (Alejandro Sieveking), Father García (Marcelo Alonso), Sister Mónica (Antonia Zegers), Father Silva (Jaime Vadell) and Father Ortega (Alejandro Goic). Courtesy of Music Box Films.

“The Club,” Pablo Larrain’s darkly directed film from Chile featuring a taut original script by Guillermo Calderón, Daniel Villalobos and Larrain, is dark from the standpoint of subject matter as well as the stunning gray-nuanced and stormy photography by cinematographer Sergio Armstrong.

Touching on material covered achingly by one of this year’s Oscar contenders “Spotlight,” “The Club” attempts to unveil the world of disgraced priests sent to secret hiding places both to remove them from the temptations that brought about their downfalls as well as place them, as representatives of the church, away from the dangers of exposure and prosecution.

Four priests and the ex-nun caring for them live in seclusion in an isolated hilltop house near the Chilean seaside. All have been banished, the ultimate canonical punishment, to live apart from others as punishment for their former sins. Their routine is well established, and their contact with townspeople is limited; each individual is allowed two trips into town per day, one at dawn and the other late afternoon. They are unnoticed by the village and abandoned by the church; until one day a new priest is introduced into their routine.

His arrival is unsettling as each priest is confronted once again with his own culpability, one which they steadfastly refuse to acknowledge. The new priest, himself, denies any similarity with these pariahs until the relative peace is disturbed by the arrival of an unhinged soul at their gate, a man poetically spouting the obscenities committed against him, an orphan adopted by the church, by this latest arrival. The tragic results of this encounter bring another unwanted visitor, an emissary from the Vatican whose job it is to assess the contrition and reflection of these and other priests housed in secret homes throughout the country. The threat of closure brings about the surprisingly evil machinations of the priests and the ex-nun, desperate to maintain status quo and obdurate in their denial of what brought about their disgrace. The lack of contrition is stunning.

Larrain peels back the layers of evil, not just of the residents of this “sanctuary,” but of the church and its efforts to protect itself from prosecution and culpability in the crimes committed allegedly in the name of God. The emissary, himself, is not blameless as he tries to weigh the greater good against great evil, as though there was actually a greater good. Even more interesting is Larrain’s ability to compare the church and its cover-ups with that of Chile, itself, in the era of the “disappeared.” The priests, themselves, are products of the age of Pinochet, a parallel of the impunity with which the powerful acted against the weak.

It is sometimes difficult to follow the threads Larrain is trying to weave together. His previous films, “No” with Gael Garcia Bernal being the most well-known as well as recent, all center around the abuse of power and demolition of justice during the Pinochet regime. In “The Club” he attempts to join the two, using the church as regime set on its own similar agenda. Larrain has said that he is most interested in seeing the church held legally responsible for the injustices and crimes committed by its hierarchy. For the most part, the center holds as good intentions are warped by compromise and self-interest.

The acting is chillingly excellent with notable performances by Alfredo Castro as Father Vidal, long standing inhabitant and petulantly unrepentant and Francisco Reyes as Father Garcia, the Papal emissary whose intentions are cunningly blocked at every turn. Most surprising, spanning the gamut from sincere and loving to steely, manipulative and truly malevolent is Antonia Zegers, the self-banished ex-nun who will do anything to maintain the life she has built for herself and the men dependent on her. Seeing her tight smile and narrowed eyes you will recognize the face of evil.

Again, the cinematography is stunning. Armstrong is capable of making the viewer feel the chill in the air.

Despite the fact that the ending is a bit difficult to follow, muddying some of the cause and effect, this is, nevertheless a very serious film with complex subtext raising thought-provoking questions. This is not a club to which you would want to belong.

Opening Friday, February 12 at the Nuart.

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