The Quarry (2020)

A man (Shea Whigham) is found along the side of the road by a preacher traveling to his new assignment. The man won't say what he was doing there, but the preacher can guess he's on the run. He pulls off in an old quarry far from anything and offers the man a chance to confess.

The man kills him instead, then assumes his identity and assignment, rather than, I don't know, just taking the van and any money and running. The first night in town, he doesn't heed the caretaker's (Catalina Sadino Moreno) advice and bring in his (the preacher's possessions), and they get stolen. Including his bloody shirt. As it turns out, the thieves are her family, and she's also in a relationship with the widower sheriff (Michael Shannon). "Relationship" might be too strong a word; he comes to her place for sex, but never stays the night or for breakfast the next morning.

And so, while the sheriff hunts and arrests Valentin, and ultimately charges him for the murder of the body in the quarry, the man tries to be a preacher, telling others about God, forgiveness, and all that, while watching another man be hunted and tried for his crime.

Whigham plays his role as soft-spoken, when he speaks at all. You'd almost expect that the sheriff would remain silent, allowing the killer to expose himself, but it's the reverse. Shannon always fills the conversations they have, mostly by talking about himself or how the town's gone downhill. He clearly envisioned this as a job where he'd be respected and beloved, the big lawman, and it hasn't worked out like that. Whigham lets him talk and never reveals much of himself.

Everything Whigham does say could be taken two ways. When he tells his (rapidly growing) congregation that he, 'just reads the words,' they take it that he's merely a vessel for God's words to reach them, and so there's no reason for him to speak down to them as the previous preachers apparently did. When really, he's just grasping at straws to keep this facade up. He begins a prayer for the dead man, but is too overcome to continue speaking. No problem, the congregation take it that he's encouraging them to pray aloud as a group. And so it goes.

The way the movie ends - the man asking forgiveness from one unable or unwilling to give it - makes me wonder what the true preacher was running from. He drank excessively, and didn't seem to have much zest for his assignment. He mentions he loved a woman once, which makes me wonder if she was underage or married, but says no one knows about it. But it feels like, when he encouraged Whigham to confess his sins there in the quarry, that he might have been looking for his own absolution, as Whigham is at the end.