Wonderful character development!

Very Cool!!!

Truly Dreadful Film

A Masterpiece!

Angry looking, twitchy Richard Burton stars as a priest at an all boys school. He's all for slapping down the disabled, annoying pupil while praising the sycophantic, sneaky pupil (I've forgotten their names already). Meanwhile, Billy Connolly of all people turns up as a drifter and after being told to bolt by Burton, sets up camp on the school grounds and begins to turn the sneaky pupil's head onto drink and drugs and living free. Vexed by Connolly's free spirit and nimble banjo plucking, Burton sets out to get rid of the Glaswegian hippy and get his pupil to return where every adolescent boy belongs: in a school run by Catholic priests. Brian Glover appears as a policeman that gives out a good old seventies police kicking for good measure. However, the tables turn as the young pupil confesses that he's murdered somebody, but is he telling the truth or is it just all mind games to drive old rummy Burton out of his mind?This film is deadly, deadly slow, but quite on purpose. It's yet another one of these seventies movies where the plot zigs and zags and somehow retains a dark atmosphere that modern films somehow can't quite emulate. There's very little by way of action, but one burst of violence took me by surprise in it's brutality (a nasty axe to the face scene). Burton looks genuinely annoyed at everything, and as this was Billy Connolly back when he was funny, he's enjoyable too. This is not a film for insomniacs but good for those with a bit of patience.

I came upon this movie after it had already begun. I couldn't find the programme listing - so was completely 'at sea' as to the genre and mode for a time. Now, having read others' comments I can offer a different slant. My 'start' was around the time when two priests were talking, and referring to (Dyson?) needing extra care as he was vulnerable - and shortly after Benji pressuring Fr Goddard to hear his confession in the priest's study (usually a no-no) regarding his meetings with the seriously weird Billy Connolly character and his voluptuous lady. For a time I felt there was a Hitchcock-like parody running - the sound-track music seeming to be bordering on comic-horror. Viewing with today's (2009) sensibilities had me wondering if we were going to be traveling to the dire domain of sexual abuse so much a feature of recent RC 'outings' in real life, and for me for a time then added to serious tension. Of course there was no such sub-plot; Goddard was a 'true-blue' pre-Vatican II priest - a desperate "keep me constant Lord - keep me constant!" his prayer in times of dire temptation to stgrike back at his tormentor/s.I had never heard of this film - but was lured to stick with it because of Richard Burton - granite-like and deeply troubled from the first take. The plot twists were rather tortuous, and I didn't pick up the impersonation going on in the confessional, so was greatly caught up in the last plot movements.I agree with commentators that some of the filming tricks struck exactly the right note. The sequences in the woods were seriously spooky with their blurred shadowy nuances of being followed.The colouration plan was obviously meant to be monochromatic with only 'splash' instances of colour? i.e. inside the school and the character's hair and skin tones are quite black/white - with the priestly stole singularly purple, and outside of course, green was truly green.I rate this movie much more highly than most. At the very least it is of distinctive genre, keeps you viewing (past the small hours) and displays the legendary Burton still able to strut his thespian stuff with the best of them.

Penned by Anthony Shaffer, who also wrote the screenplay for the amazing film, ‘The Wicker Man', ‘Absolution' had a similar feel to it. The pacing was intentionally slow, but mysterious, making the end all the more powerful and memorable. It worked very well in ‘The Wicker Man'. Here, however, the twist was pretty lame and illogical, and it almost seemed comical. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that I felt as someone in the writing room threw this ending out, and it only made it in the movie because no one could think of something better. As a payoff I found it to be slightly insulting. I focus so much of my attention on the ending because the whole movie is in the last five minutes. Every other part of the movie is fine. Solid acting, a script that set up the ending beautifully, and Billy Connolly was a great casting choice, but all that lost when the writer hit a block. Since the whole movie was in the ending, I would have to say this is one to stay away from, unless you're a Billy Connolly fan, in which case just watch the bits where he's in. Rating: 21/40

I don't think anyone can really like this movie. It doesn't do things in a different strange way which is good. But the movie is just so boring, and you are waiting for it to be over. The acting really isn't that bad, but you don't care about that when your watching it. I give it a 1 1/2 out of 5.