Once upon a time there was a young,
green priest, Don Fabijan. (Kresimir Mikic) He was saddened by
modern ways, like people having sex for pleasure rather than
procreation. As such, he felt called to stem the decay of the
Croatian island community he sought to lead to the light, a place
where the death rate was greater than the birth rate. Then again,
this feeling may have been exacerbated by the other older,
universally adored priest who excelled everywhere Fabijan was
awkward. So when a sheep from his flock named Petar (Niksa Butijer)
came and asked him if selling condoms was a sin, he decided to
cleanse the sheep of (some of) their sins. How? Well, he decided to
use a needle and pierce an imperceptible hole in all the condoms sold
in the community. That way, a pregnancy would truly be God's will,
not man's. Along the way, they are assisted by a pharmacist and
Bosnian war veteran whose time spent in Serb and Muslim camps had
left him less than sane, as well as a passionate believer in
increasing the Croatian population.
Stop me if you've heard this before.
No? Well, I'll keep going then. Naturally, this has consequences
for the island. Some they forsee, such a whole lot more
pregnancies and marriages. Others they don't, such as an increase in
visitors to the island, since it is believed that the high birth
rates are due to currents. But darker, more tragic, consequences are
also unavoidable.
As those consequences continue and pile
up, what begins as laugh out loud comedy soon ends up sparking a less
than comedic domino effect. A baby is abandoned in front of the
church, leading Petar and his wife Martha to fake a pregnancy so they
can pass it off as their own. But the giggles stop when one young
woman becomes barren and another dies.
It all leaves the once idealistic
Fabijan disillusioned and eager for his end, and us with a harsh
indictment on a church, especially the Papacy of the
former Benedict XVI, which shows us an institution
and the shepherds that represent it imposing its values and
the consequences thereof on the rest of the world while literally
getting away with murder themselves.
It's all pulled off with excellent
performances and exquisite comedic timing, while also making great
use of the location and history. The problem is that the more
absurdist tone at the beginning of “The Priest's Children” feels
like too stark of a contrast for the much bleaker one at the end,
especially for a movie that passes itself off as a comedy.
Nevertheless, it stands as a very well executed cautionary tale for
how our judgments against others become sins in themselves.
Grade: B-
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