Corpus Christi (2019)

This is a movie that openly questions the the Catholic Church, bot as an institution and as a hierarchical organization that is failing its followers badly.  Faith — that cornerstone of Christianity — backfires on believers when those who lead them cannot be trusted, as in the case of rampant sexual abuse of children which was not just covered up but also condoned.
The first and foremost question is what makes for a priest as a spiritual leader?  A devotion to God, completion of seminary training and ordination by a bishop to deacon status — all this must happen before one can wear the collar in the Catholic church.   But this stunning, quietly subversive movie sees the question in more existential terms.  It show a well-meaning juvenile delinquent who has been bullied in detention, but found faith in god while incarcerated.  he has been placed in a small Polish village for his probation in a lumber mill which is run much like a prison shop.  The harshness is a recipe for failure for him to succeed.  So he skips all that spiritual preparation to con a small Polish community into accepting him as a  proxy priest while the parish’s regular priest sobers up.  With his tortured energy and intense, ice-on-fire eyes, this mysterious interloper is earnest and surprisingly effective in his unconventional methods, and the sympathy is unambiguously in his corner, even if what he’s doing is immediate grounds for excommunication. Inspired by real events, the film dramatizes what turns out to be a fairly common occurrence in contemporary Poland: Evidently, every few months, someone is outed for impersonating a man of the cloth. The movie leaves the greater question of why this is happening alone, but does deeply question what makes a religious leader.