THE RIGHTEOUS – a film by Mark O’Brien – (limited spoilers) ⁓

Frederick Mason (Henry Czerny) was a Catholic priest until ten years ago when he met and married Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk). A few years later the couple adopted Joanie (Briar-Rose Stone), whose biological mother Doris has kept in touch with the Masons without letting Joanie know that she’s her mother. As the story begins, we see the still-devout Frederick praying for God to send him a penance. Next we see Joanie’s funeral, and it is not clear how much time has passed between the two events. Frederick (it turns out) has “spells” or “mental lapses” which began some twenty years ago (soon after he moved to his current location from “the north”).

Doris (Kate Corbett) visits the Masons after the funeral, ostensibly to offer condolences. Doris is insecure about most everything, and what she actually wants is to be reassured that Joanie’s death wasn’t caused by her decision to give the child up. She is aware that the Masons are trying to get her to leave, yet she stays longer than one might expect. Once Doris departs, Frederick boards up Joanie’s vacant room.

A man screams outside. Armed with a butcher knife, Fred investigates and finds Aaron (Mark O’Brien) in the yard, screaming in pain from an injured ankle, pleading for help.

Though Aaron has no phone and says little about himself, Frederick decides to let him stay the night (much to Ethel’s surprise and concern). What Ethel doesn’t know is that Frederick has a secret. Two decades ago, he used his position in the church to con a woman into having sex with him. The woman (we never learn her name) became pregnant and died in childbirth. Fred’s version of that tale may or may not be true. It seems more likely that Fred did both the right thing and the wrong thing back then (depending on one’s point of view), and that dichotomy is what led him southward to a new parish, and ultimately made him leave the priesthood for Ethel.

Aaron identifies himself as the child Fred abandoned twenty years ago, and politely asks the former priest to kill him. “It’s not murder,”, says the impish Aaron, “because I asked you.” Fred, being very Catholic, begs to differ and expresses doubt as to Aaron’s authenticity, saying: “You’re not…who you think you are.” The young man touches a white rose in a nearby vase and it withers and dies. “They say God’s children that aren’t possessed of love become possessed by something else,” he tells Fred.”

The remainder of Fred and Aaron’s conversation, boiled down to its essence, is this:
AARON: “Imagine being born into a body that no one wants and nobody asked for.”
FRED: “Do you know what it means for a man of God to kill? Even one that’s flawed? It means the end of everything. Mankind will be punished. It’ll be fire and fury.”
AARON: “Maybe you’re the only one who will be punished, and the punishment will set you free. You think God’ll punish for showing mercy?”
FRED: “This isn’t mercy. It doesn’t work that way. This is a life.”
AARON: “Why is God always right? This man you never even met?”

Then Frederick wakes in his own bed and Ethel tells him that he slept soundly all night.

Fred explains his predicament in vague terms to Father Graham (Nigel Bennett), the priest that replaced him. Graham looks for scripture appropriate to the situation and settles on the Book of Revelations: “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse…I see that as a symbol,”, he tells Frederick. “Nothing tangible. It is sin itself. Open it up and you get action and choice. Every day we decide to do or not do things which we believe are or are not a sin. We open a book; we turn a page. We have a drink; we start a fire. We press a button. Some are sins, some not, so who decides? It depends on what hooks into you and won’t let go…I see sin around me every day, but I don’t see any horsemen in the streets, or balls of fire in the sky. Sin has a life of its own. What’s important is knowing the difference between what’s real and what our conscience has created to punish us.”

Without revealing too much about the film’s ending, it can be said that Father Graham was not terribly helpful.

The cast is small, and the actors are well-chosen. Fred’s divided reality is communicated with a zealot’s fervour, while Ethel’s fear of being alone anchors the story in reality. THE RIGHTEOUS needed to be filmed in black and white, because it makes the isolation of the Mason’s home both severe and convincing, and the old church acquires a sinister feel when captured that way. Writer/director O’Brien told Caitlin Kennedy of Daily Dead: “To me, our subconsciousness is murky and indecipherable. Colour would bring too much reality and understanding to this story, which our lead character is lacking. I always imagine Frederick as seeing things in black and white, while the rest of the characters see everything in colour…This film is about something you can’t quite place, and black and white achieves that effect.”

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THE RIGHTEOUS can be streamed on Arrow Player (in the US, UK, and Canada),
on Shadowz Channel in France.
and on Blu-ray