Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

Borgarkeri A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

mark.waltz As a teaching priest in a British boy's academy, Richard Burton finds himself up against some calculating minds in this depressing drama. The judgments of his old school religion turns one of his prized pupils against him, claiming in confession sins of the flesh and taking it a step too far as a further part of his revenge. This is basically a variation of "The Children's Hour" with boys instead of girls, as well as a bit of "The History Boys" and various other educational stories where a teacher thought of as a mentor finds themselves in a moral crisis beyond their comprehension. By the time this hits its dramatic high point, the audience is numb from trying to comprehend what it's all about. While Burton is fine and the young actors all believable, it's the way the story progresses that turns it upside down to make it extremely frustrating to try and follow, let alone believe. There's a passive/aggressive crippled student who goes out of his way to make the situation worse, all seemingly out of revenge towards Burton for favoring the more popular boys. The lack of real motivation makes this feel forced, a twisting path in the woods that seems to be out to attack the sacrament of absolution rather than to explain its purpose. Having had only a preview showing after completion, it was released officially years after Burton's death, sparing him the embarrassment of its quick failure.

MartinHafer "Absolution" is a film that has somehow faded into the public domain. So, if you are interested in seeing it, you can download it for free from archive.org. Often IMDb links to this site but in this case, oddly, it has not.The film is set at a Catholic boarding school. An incredibly humorless priest, Father Goddard (Richard Burton) teaches Latin at the school and in most of his dealings with the students, he's a nasty and cold man. He's so cold that he naturally breeds contempt in some of his students. And, this coldness and inflexibility will eventually be his undoing.In the course of his work, Father Goddard has also managed to alienate a stranger--a drifter and a bit of a rogue (Billy Connelly). Instead of showing the love of God, Goddard is cold and dismissive of the man. However, because he does treat this man so poorly as well as students, one of the boys finds a kindred spirit in this drifter. They become friends and the boy starts sneaking out at night to spend time with the guy. Where does all this lead? Well, certainly NOT where you'd expect it to go!!! The film turns out to be a dandy suspense film--and one that kept me guessing many times. It's very interesting and worth seeing though I have one reservation. While the teens playing the students were pretty good actors, occasionally Burton seemed to overact. I know, he's well respected by many, but here he did seem to overdo it just a bit. By the way, another part that didn't come off well was the violent scene involving a shovel to the head. However, I would say that although it looked fake, I am happy it wasn't more graphic!

Bezenby Angry looking, twitchy Richard Burton stars as a priest at an all boys school. He's all for slapping down the disabled, annoying pupil while praising the sycophantic, sneaky pupil (I've forgotten their names already). Meanwhile, Billy Connolly of all people turns up as a drifter and after being told to bolt by Burton, sets up camp on the school grounds and begins to turn the sneaky pupil's head onto drink and drugs and living free. Vexed by Connolly's free spirit and nimble banjo plucking, Burton sets out to get rid of the Glaswegian hippy and get his pupil to return where every adolescent boy belongs: in a school run by Catholic priests. Brian Glover appears as a policeman that gives out a good old seventies police kicking for good measure. However, the tables turn as the young pupil confesses that he's murdered somebody, but is he telling the truth or is it just all mind games to drive old rummy Burton out of his mind?This film is deadly, deadly slow, but quite on purpose. It's yet another one of these seventies movies where the plot zigs and zags and somehow retains a dark atmosphere that modern films somehow can't quite emulate. There's very little by way of action, but one burst of violence took me by surprise in it's brutality (a nasty axe to the face scene). Burton looks genuinely annoyed at everything, and as this was Billy Connolly back when he was funny, he's enjoyable too. This is not a film for insomniacs but good for those with a bit of patience.

Jonathon Dabell 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.