The Club, intelligently complex yet not in the least academic, has the dynamism of a thriller. Essentially a moral fable, the Chilean director Pablo Larrain follow-up to his Oscar-nominated Film No, is at once a bold tale rooted in the reality of the Catholic Church’s pedophilia scandal.
Four exiled priests and a caretaker nun live a hermetic life in a house on the shore of Chile. They are prohibited from mixing in with the townspeople, and aside from singing hymns, seem to spend most of their time watching TV and surreptitiously training a greyhound who earns them a few dollars at the dog track. Then one day an outsider, Father Lazcano, another wayward priest, is brought to their door to join them. He also brings disturbing baggage with him when suddenly a bellowing vagabond is right outside the house–loudly and relentlessly detailing sexual abuse he suffered as a victim of Lazcano. The eerie vagrant, Sandokan (Roberto Farias), doesn’t intend on leaving.
A resultant tragedy ensues. It brings a Jesuit counselor, Father Garcia (Marcel Alonso) into the house. The four original priests sense he’s there to shut it down. As the priests are grilled by Garcia we learn they are not all there due to pedophilia, but one is present because he kidnapped babies from unwed mothers who he says were likely to kill their offspring. As Garcia grills them, the cynical, defensive, yet uniquely compelling priests are anything but repentant. In a strange but riveting venture into black humor, the occupants of the house, the dogs, and Sandokan share an apocalyptic sequence to the tune of Arvo Part’s Canto In Memoriam Benjamin Britten.
In Catholic terms the house clearly represents Purgatory, but one not seeming to offer a possibility of redemption. By film’s end the routine of the passive penance of the priests is replaced with a drastically altered existence. It’s an ironic yet clearly punitive decision by Father Garcia. Yes, it contains the faint possibility of renewed faith. Yet the allegory becomes a double one as a chilling realization sets in that the final state of the house also comes to symbolize plight of the current Catholic Church as it futilely deals with its shady, overbearing recent history.
In The Name of the Greyhounds and The Guttersnipe….4 stars (out of 5)