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About 20 minutes into Martin McDonagh’s new film, Mildred, played by Frances McDormand, delivers a tongue-lashing soliloquy to the local priest. He has come by her house to warn her against taking on the powers-that-be in their small town. Her sudden rant, invoking the history of the Crips and the Bloods (don’t ask), tears the clergyman limb from limb—and leaves the audience in delight, if slightly uneasy.
For an Anglo-Irish playwright like Mr. McDonagh, it is no big stretch to take a swing at the Catholic Church. “That’s…