I can't really judge this movie on its own merits. I just read G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories a few months ago and they are all too fresh in my mind. Choosing Alec Guinness to bring this version of the duel between the Father and Peter Finch's Le Flambeau is an interesting choice. I am left with the thought that had Guinness played George Smiley like this and played Father Brown as he would play Smiley, both roles would have been better served. Chesterton's Father Brown is an observer, a speculum to bring G*d's vision to bear on this naughty world, freeing us from our superstitious blindness and able to see the truth behind all illusion. Guinness is too present, with his idiotic smile and dogged missionary work, frustrated in his work and then rewarded by fate.... or at least, the screenwriter.
It seems vaguely to me that this is the very Catholic -- or perhaps mean-spirited -- viewpoint of the movie; I don't know, I am, after all, Jewish, and this game that G*d plays with Brown strikes me as ridiculous and unworthy of Him. Just because the world is too complicated for me -- or perhaps anyone -- to understand, is no reason to make a mystery of it, in either the detective story or religious sense of the word.
It seems vaguely to me that this is the very Catholic -- or perhaps mean-spirited -- viewpoint of the movie; I don't know, I am, after all, Jewish, and this game that G*d plays with Brown strikes me as ridiculous and unworthy of Him. Just because the world is too complicated for me -- or perhaps anyone -- to understand, is no reason to make a mystery of it, in either the detective story or religious sense of the word.