Playing an emotionally burdened small-town Catholic priest in culturally isolated 1950s Ireland, Martin Sheen does his best work since "The West Wing" in Thaddeus O'Sullivan's Stella Days.
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Village Voice
Village Voice
Thanks to its understated elegance and surpassing central performance, this modest, too-eagerly schematic period drama is more engrossing than it has a right to be.
Although Martin Sheen often goes full cherub in his depiction of the film's central Catholic priest, the pictue is also a frank assessment of a cleric's crisis of faith and the church's rather ruthless efforts to maintain medieval control in the face of modernization.
Relaxed performances and pillow-soft photography compensate somewhat for the story's narrow ambitions, but they're not enough to invigorate a movie that clearly would rather charm than challenge.
Sheen's throwback portrayal is appealing enough, but flat characters, dull revelations and uninvolving complications make this deliberately small film feel nearly microscopic.