Best movie of this year hands down!

Wow! Such a good movie.

Too much of everything

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This movie is somewhat hard to watch because it is slow-paced and low-budget, but the great acting by Richard Burton and the others make up for this. More importantly, it brings up a unique set of issues that other movies do not, at least not in one single movie. The effects of Father Goddard's favoritism towards apple-polishing Benji at the expense of the more intelligent Dyson. The homoerotic dynamics between Goddard/Benji, Blakey/Benji, Goddard/Dyson, and basically everyone, and the sadism of Benji towards the masochist Dyson (who ultimately is more clever). The biggest issue, more important now than ever, is how crimes can be hidden within the Catholic church which sees itself as above the law and above family/friendship, and well- meaning priests will perpetuate this, because they are inculcated that this is their highest duty. This simple yet extremely intelligent movie shows how the Catholic church can be rendered impotent to protect people because (in theory) its priests are sworn to secrecy, and may not appeal to secular police.

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.

Anthony Shaffer's scripts are nearly always identifiable by the way they stay cleverly one step ahead of the viewer. In his original scripts, such as The Wicker Man and Sleuth, Shaffer skilfully hides shocking and memorable twists right up to the films' conclusion. Also in his adapted scripts – such as Frenzy and Death On The Nile - Shaffer manages to generate lots of mystery and suspense before delivering his trademark surprise-solutions. However, in Absolution, a 1978 film scripted by Shaffer and directed by Anthony Page, the twists are somewhat overdone. Indeed, the film becomes positively excessive in its determination to lead the viewer up various blind alleys, in pursuit of countless red herrings. Slowly but surely credibility is strained, until it collapses altogether at the film's preposterous climax. This is a shame, as the film has an intriguing concept and contains some good performances.At a particularly strict Catholic boarding school, a pupil named Ben Stanfield (Dominic Guard) grows fed up with his reputation as the teacher's pet of priest Father Goddard (Richard Burton). In a moment of outrageous mischief, he speaks to Father Goddard in the confession box and confesses to him that he has murdered a fellow pupil named Arthur Dyson (Dai Bradley). Goddard is understandably distraught to learn of this, more so because he is bound by duty to keep secret all confessions that are made to him. Later Goddard goes to the place where Ben claims to have buried the corpse, but discovers when he digs it up that it is merely a scarecrow and that he has been the victim of a nasty prank. The plot thickens when Ben again tells Father Goddard that he has murdered his fellow student, but this time a real body turns up. The mental strain on Goddard is immense. On one hand, he knows who the killer is, but on the other he can do nothing because his religion says that whatever is passed in confidence in a confession box must remain forever secret. Mad with despair, Goddard takes desperate measures to put a stop to these evil pranks, only to learn too late that all is not what it seems….Burton's performance as the priest is pretty good. One must admit that the film is far-fetched and reaches a delirious, hysterical tone by the end, but throughout Burton manages to give a believable and absorbing performance. The pacing is quite good too, with a deliberately slow build-up that lures the viewer into a false sense of security before the genuinely nasty stuff gets underway. In some ways it seems churlish to criticise Shaffer's script for its twists, because they do at least keep the audience guessing, and few will predict what is coming next. But the thing that makes most of Shaffer's earlier works so effective is that the twists fit in to the overall narrative with eerie plausibility, whereas in this one they seem extremely contrived and over-the-top. I certainly don't agree with some reviewers who suggest that the film is an unmitigated disaster, and the fact that U.S distributors shelved the film for 10 years is very unfair in light of some of the absolute rubbish they release straight away. Absolution is a mid-quality audience teaser, not plausible enough to have any long-lasting resonance but tangled enough to keep its audience guessing.

In the last decade of his life Richard Burton was doing just about anything put in front of him for money. He felt, probably rightly so, that he had nothing to prove as an actor. So why not build up a nest egg, especially with all the heavy duty alimony he was laying out. It's the only reason I could think of he did Absolution.Burton plays a priest at a British Catholic school where he's got some really sadistic kids on his hands. After a class in which he carefully explains the religious implications of the confessional and the restrictions it places upon a priest hearing confession, Father Burton hears some confessions that positively drive him to the brink and he singles out one youth as responsible for it all. Drives Father Dick quite bonkers.It's pretty bad, it's the sort of stuff that the producers of American slasher films would do with a little more gore. It didn't enhance Burton's reputation and I wouldn't waste my time.