Heed Not The Rolling Wave

Midnight Mass

It's supposed to be about God!

Shona has been trying to get me into horror stuff, and as part of that we recently watched the Netflix series Midnight Mass which I don't think could be more laser-targeted at me if it tried: religious themes, full of monologues, soundtrack is hymns, etc. More fundamentally, it is perhaps the best on-screen depiction of religion as actually practiced and encountered by normal people—I enjoyed e.g. Conclave but that's about political wrangling in the Vatican—and I mean religion when I say religion here, too. I appreciate the distinction between religion and faith, one that tends to be drawn to derogate religion, and I think it's a fair comment that certain forms of religion are very poor guideposts to the divine, but I think religion is (or can be) a worthwhile and significant thing in itself.

A lot of media uses religion (and I think Catholicism especially) as a kind of... aesthetic backdrop, but isn't really about how people encounter it in their real lives. Midnight Mass, by contrast, is so much about the rhythms of engagement with the church, week by week: going along to services, singing hymns, listening to sermons. It progresses from just before Lent, through Lent down to Easter Sunday, and that progression is very important! It being Ordinary Time at the beginning is of actual plot significance. Moreover, the show captures what it's like being a member of a church, and particularly a church in a small village. The church I grew up in was pretty much the opposite of Catholic (and I grew up in the countryside, not on an island) but the interpersonal dynamics of it are all very familiar.

I've known a lot of Bev Keanes (awful interfering busybodies who relentlessly judge others, inveigle themselves into positions of minor influence and authority and will never, ever, be happy). In a version of the show without any supernatural shenanigans, Bev Keane would be the unquestioned villain. I feel like you could make a pretty good argument she's the real villain either way. The contradictory nature of Riley's brother Warren, who sneaks out to smoke weed with his friends at night but is up early to be the altar boy the next morning is one I'm very familiar with—I mean, I wasn't a cool kid smoking weed but that tension is one I know well. Riley's parents are in many respects similar to my own. I, meanwhile, am the beardy lad who plays the organ (and I have definitely had the "the vicar's not here yet, can you just carry on vamping for a while" experience).

As for the Fr Paul, the priest, the centre of the show: I don't know how Hamish Linklater prepared for the part, but the way he shifts between well-meaning and awkward to turning up the intensity, smacking the pulpit: that's real. Almost every minister I've ever known has been like that, had that real fire once they get going. And the way he cares is real too. Ultimately there's... well, without wanting to spoil things too much, it turns out there is Something Going On with him, but he's not an Evil Priest in the ways you might expect—he genuinely cares for and wants to help the people of his parish. That is so present in his heart that he is shown to have made choices throughout his life to continue doing so, contrary to certain personal wishes, that make his eventual actions in the show make a peculiar sense to me[1].

There's a point where Bev calls out Fr Paul for wearing the wrong coloured chasuble for the point in the liturgical year that they are, and when you learn some stuff that happens later in the show it's retrospectively clear that there was actually a reason for that[2]. You don't need to understand why and when different types of vestment are worn or about the various miracles of Jesus or what the stations of the cross are going in—and in fact if you do you might also end up trying to work out what year the show is set in based on the lectionary (even I didn't go that far)—but if you're the kind of person who does I think you'll be impressed at those things being not just window dressing but foundational. Some of it was a little goofy, a few of the swings missed for me, but in general not only did I enjoy it, I thought it contained a remarkable amount of humanity and truth.

  1. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of some big event happening to you that should very clearly be your priority, but your actual focus is on some emotional turmoil you're experiencing that means you're really somewhat elsewhere? This show really gets that. ↩︎

  2. This gets addressed in dialogue in the final episode but I called it before that so I'm taking the W here. ↩︎