#Calibre film movie#

The argument in 'Cal' is that in a situation like the one they find themselves in, it is impossible to be a bystander. But the real story, of course, is that some people are unlucky enough to live in times and places where their actions do have tragic consequences. There is a way, I suppose, in which we could argue that Cal and Marcella deserve to be doomed lovers - that they have to accept the consequences of their actions. The household is a world of closed-in feelings, words not spoken, and festering psychic wounds. Marcella's in-laws believe their son would still be alive if he had not married a Catholic. Cal's old IRA friends are not prepared to let him off the hook.

#Calibre film movie#

What the movie is really about is the way in which their love cannot be the center of their lives, because of the society they live in and the actions that they both have already taken. If Cal and Marcella's love story were the center of the movie, 'Cal' would not, however, be very interesting. He knows a lot about toughness and a lot about cynicism, but very little about the way love can make you feel. The love scenes in 'Cal' are among the loveliest I've seen, because Helen Mirren, who plays Marcella, makes her such a sweet and tender woman, and John Lynch, who plays Cal, is so touchingly sincere. They are both so desperately alienated that love for them begins with somebody to share a smile with. They also have no idea that Marcella and Cal are having an affair, but that is what shyly, clumsily, against her better judgment, they do. And then, after Protestants fire-bomb the cottage where he lives with his father, Cal goes to live secretly in an abandoned barn on the farm Marcella's in-laws have no idea he isn't going home at night. He eventually talks himself into a job on the farm where she lives. Her husband, a policeman, was killed by the IRA not long ago, and she has started to support herself.Д¬al puts himself in Marcella's way. He finds out her name, Marcella, and some information about her: She is a Catholic, half Irish, half Italian, who lives with her Protestant in-laws on a farm outside of town. The way that she says it instantly enchants him. He is in the library one day, and hears the new librarian say something.