Word: priestly
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...sensitive moment for the regime of General Wojciech , Jaruzelski. A week earlier, four Interior Ministry officials had been sentenced by a Toruan court to jail terms ranging from 14 to 25 years for their role in the abduction and murder last October of a pro-Solidarity Roman Catholic priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko. The trial discredited the state security apparatus and suggested the possibility of a plot by Communist hard- liners against Jaruzelski's leadership. As a result, the authorities seemed more intent than ever on containing their opponents...
...target is the overwhelmingly popular Roman Catholic Church. Said Religious Affairs Minister Adam Lopatka: "The authorities' error was that Popieluszko was not imprisoned long ago." Henceforth, Lopatka said, any priest who "deserves it will certainly be arrested." Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban suggested that a dozen priests had made statements worthy of investigation...
Sound familiar? It should: the corrupted priest following for the modifications made here for the benefit of the TV generation) has been around and has been satirized since the earliest days of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet Farley is the latest, the most inventive and complex, in this reliquary of triteness, this film of continuous banality. Lemmon copes admirably: at moments reminiscent of Ronald Reagan at his complacent best, he creates with terrifying familiarity a portrait of the sycophantic politician per excellence. He oozes charm, exudes insincerity, succeeding so well, in fact, that the only thing priestly about this...
...where's the tension, the plot? You may well ask. What there is of a plot consists primarily of a so-called internal conflict: Jack Lemmon torn between the desire to save his own skin and that of a seminary student and would-be priest. Mark Dolson, (Zeljko Ivanek) from the blind prejudices of the cranky and overwright Monsignor Burke (Charles Durning), the head of the seminary and of a true cardboard villain worthy of a ten-gallon hat and a black cowboy suit...
...spring from a true religious fervor? Is the hell is James Dean doing in a seminary anyway? In one of the too-frequent moments of agonized soul-searching thirdly a spectator sport). Dolson reveals to Father Farley the real reason for his bizarre and desperate wish to become a priest: boredom and fatigue from too much debauchery, too soon. But are we really to believe that he would rather enter the priesthood as something of a medieval crusader than take a brief vacation, or just head off to a regular college? And who cares anyway...