Priest (1994) (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Antonia BirdRelease Date(s)
1994 (November 26, 2025)Studio(s)
BBC Films (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: B
- Extras Grade: B
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
Extremely controversial when it was released, Priest is a drama about a young man whose convictions conflict with a deep secret he’s harboring. Although the film was made more than 30 years ago, its themes are still timely and the performances gripping.
Father Greg Pilkington (Linus Roache) comes to the Liverpool Catholic parish of the older Father Matthew Thomas (Tom Wilkinson) to replace a retiring priest. A stranger in town, the young priest nonetheless wins over the parishioners with his charm and congenial personality. But his conservative views conflict with those of Father Matthew, a more progressive cleric who sleeps with the housekeeper (Cathy Tyson), sings karaoke at the local pub, and gives sermons that are heavily political.
Father Greg is contemptuous of his fellow priest’s lifestyle, and their differing points of view concerning their role in the community eventually clash. Asserting that priests are not social workers, Father Greg believes Father Matthew’s activism in the parish goes well beyond his calling. Matthew believes Greg is simply delivering pat homilies to his flock. Greg tells Matthew to get rid of the housekeeper. Having a mistress is a sin, plain and simple.
Seemingly a by-the-book clergyman, Father Greg one night removes his collar, puts on a leather jacket, rides his bike to a local gay bar, and picks up a man named Graham (Robert Carlyle). They wind up having sex in Graham’s apartment. Subsequently, Father Greg to feels guilty and uneasy about what he’s done and, when he encounters Graham by chance on the street, he refuses to greet him.
Father Greg’s job includes hearing the confessions of school children. One day, 14-year-old Lisa (Christine Tremarco) tells him in the confessional that her father has been forcing her to have sex with him. He says she should tell her father that Father Greg said to stop. Later, the girl’s father (Robert Pugh) warns the priest to keep out of his business and subsequently turns up in the confessional to declare incest is “the most natural thing in the world.”
Father Greg is forbidden by church law and his vows to violate the sanctity of the confessional and tell Lisa’s mother what’s going on. The young priest now has three big Catholic dilemmas that he must face—the vow of celibacy, the homosexual taboo, and the privileged privacy of the confessional. For a good part of the film, Father Greg is beset by serious doubts about himself, his priestly role, and society’s expectations.
Linus Roache expresses a range of emotion as the morally tormented priest. He’s shocked by Father Matthew’s behavior and displays arrogance and a judgmental air. With Graham, he’s open, vulnerable and passionate. When Lisa tells Father Greg about her horrible home life, he’s compassionate and disturbed, wondering whether the girl’s welfare is cause enough to betray his vows.
As Graham, Carlyle says a lot with his eyes, whether they single out Greg in the bar or show disappointment when Greg passes him up on the street after they’ve engaged in sex. When Greg refuses to administer communion to Graham during church service, Carlyle’s expression combines disbelief, dejection, and deep sadness.
Tom Wilkinson’s performance is down-to-earth and believable. His Father Matthew is an experienced common-sense priest who knows how to separate what’s important in his role and what isn’t. This makes him a rebel, especially in the Catholic church. He knows his parishioners and gears his sermons to their needs, both spiritual and material. Wilkinson is a big man and great at making blustering, self-righteous pronouncements that might seem over the top with a lesser actor. He infuses his dialogue with intensity, fervor and sincerity.
Director Antonia Bird takes on serious themes in Priest. She and screenwriter Jimmy McGovern play devil’s advocate with two very different points of view concerning a priest’s responsibility to his parishioners. Father Matthew believes a priest’s influence should extend beyond moral platitudes and regurgitation of church doctrine, understanding that parishioners have lives beyond the pews. Father Greg is young and tied to doctrine. When he breaks two of his vows with Graham, he’s consumed with guilt. By keeping one of his vows, he fails to protect an abused child. The conflict between the demands of church doctrine and simple humanity tears at him. Director Bird manages to deal with the two main plot lines effectively, showing how both test Father Greg’s faith. That he’s treated as a human being, not a metaphor, makes his consternation and confusion relatable.
Bird uses Liverpool locations and extras to portray Father Greg’s world. He walks past deserted buildings, greets parishioners, eats his meals in the modest kitchen of the priests’ lodgings, teaches children in the bare-bones church school, and assists Mass in the grandiose, glowing church. Bird uses close-ups frequently as a visual means to let us know what characters are thinking. Dialogue is concise and without unnecessary flourish. McGovern’s script creates and maintains suspense as he balances the story lines. Bird’s cast is excellent at conveying exactly what their characters are feeling and infusing them with authenticity.
Priest was shot by director of photography Fred Tammes on 35mm film with spherical lenses, finished photochemically, and presented in the aspect ratio of 1.66:1 (the Blu-ray has an aspect ratio of 1.85:1). For the Blu-ray release, the full uncut version of the film at 108 minutes was scanned and restored in 2K from the original camera negative by Imprint Films and the BFI. Clarity is sharp with fine detail evident in a retired priest’s whiskers, clerical vestments, the window of the confessional, and markings on police cars. Complexions are well rendered. The production design portrays the run-down working-class neighborhood that’s home to Father Greg’s parish. The crowded gay bar is smoke-filled, as is a kitchen after a broiler fire. The sex scene between Greg and Graham is shot tastefully, with some rear nudity. There are no extreme camera shots to distract from the narrative.
The soundtrack is English 2.0 Mono LPCM. English SDH subtitles are an available option. Dialogue is clear and distinct. Lisa speaks haltingly in the confessional, finding it difficult to tell Father Greg she’s being abused. Wilkinson’s Father Matthew speaks with such passion that his face reddens. The gay bar throbs with loud music and ambient noise. Sound effects include a skateboard rolling along a street, clinking tableware, traffic noise, and doors slamming. The church choir sings You’ll Never Walk Alone twice, breaking the mood with the director’s obvious intent to underscore Father Greg’s troubles.
Bonus materials on the Region-Free Blu-ray release from Imprint Films (#503) include the following:
- Interview with Actor Linus Roache (17:43)
- Q&A with Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern (28:09)
- Interview with Antonia Bird (71:35)
- Interview with Film Professor Lucy Bolton (19:33)
- Theatrical Trailer (1:50)
Interview with Actor Linus Roache – In this 2025 interview, Roache says that he grew up in an acting family. His father was a well known actor in England. Linus had a role as a child and enjoyed the audience reaction. He auditioned for drama school and started his career at the National Theater. He always aspired to get into movies, and had some lucky breaks along the way. He notes, “Work sort of breeds itself.” He played lead roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company and eventually got a lead in a BBC TV production. With a smile, he mentions that even now he has to audition despite his achievements.
Q&A with Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern – This Q&A is from the BAFTA Screenwriters’ Lecture Series. A very animated McGovern is forthright in stating that he doesn’t like writing for the theater, though that’s how he got his start in the business. He believes his stage experience gave him a body of work from which to expand into other areas. It took him a while to realize that a writer has to give of himself in a script. He was always good at generating stories. He writes a lot about the working class because he understands them. He’s surprised that so few stories about the working class mention financial problems, which are often at the forefront of their concerns. He admits that many actions in TV dramas would never take place in reality, such as an angry would-be bride throwing away an engagement ring. McGovern speaks at length about how he approaches projects and the rigors of re-writing and re-writing again.
Interview with Antonia Bird – In this archival interview with The Guardian, director Antonia Bird mentions that she’s drawn to dark material. She tells how she got into television at the BBC. She applied to film school, but was turned down and told she was so talented she would make it anyway. She was eager to learn. A woman producer hired her eight weeks prior to the TV episode she was entrusted to direct in order to train her. Bird discovered that her medium was film and established her career in film and television. She speaks about a number of projects she’s worked on. She’s proud to have directed 45 hours of television.
Interview with Film Professor Lucy Bolton – Bolton notes that Antonia Bird was an “impressive, caring filmmaker.” She had strong political convictions, was expert at conveying emotions, and wanted to tell important stories that dealt with serious issues. She had a particular talent for dark humor. She knew how to use music to supplement the meaning of her films. Much of her work was in classic British TV series. In the film Face, Bird provided an “unflinching” look at homelessness. She was able to tell challenging stories in a challenging way. Priest was controversial at the time and condemned by the Catholic Church. The film itself is compassionate. Set in Liverpool, the film has an opening that looks as if it’s going to be sinister. Linus Roache plays an idealistic priest. Tom Wilkinson portrays an older, progressive priest. Priest was a landmark picture. It was typical of Bird to take a serious situation and make it human. Bolton speaks about other Bird films that haven’t gotten proper recognition and were not widely seen, among them Care and The Hamburg Cell. Bird continued working in television even after making feature films, committed to telling political stories of importance. She was an “influential director who made an important contribution to British film and television.” Antonia Bird died at age 62.
Priest is a well made and well acted, but has its problems. The role of Father Matthew is odd. He breaks so many rules of the priesthood, one wonders why he decided to become a priest in the first place. The dialogue tells us he intended to remain in the priesthood until his mother passed away, but when she died, he was too old to find a new profession. That seems a convenient excuse to make him such an outlier of what the religion represents. The heavy-handed use of the song You’ll Never Walk Alone is jarring. It feels condescending in a film that otherwise trusts the viewer’s intelligence. Antonia Bird handles melodrama well and nicely enhances the screenplay with her camera and editing choices. Despite its shortcomings, Priest is well worth a viewing. Giving a young priest two major problems to deal with simultaneously is brave from a construction point of view, and Bird handles the challenge admirably.
- Dennis Seuling