Deliver Us From Evil
Jun. 21st, 2007 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trinityvixenI left my drinking friends last night, joking about this documentary I was going to watch about a pedophile priest and how I'd have to be drunk or else I'd totally be freaked out by it. It kinda got me weird looks all around--probably because why on earth would I want to watch that anyway? The answer is: the movie got great reviews, and I had saved it on my Netflix account and it just came up finally on the queue. I tend to do that with anything I might have a vague interest in seeing but no motivation to seek out in the theaters. This was one of them.
...
Let me be the first to say I regret all the jokes I made about watching this movie and needing a drink. I could have had two texas-sized margaritas before watching it and I still would have been stone-cold sober after about twenty minutes. This isn't a movie that drives you to drink--the horror drives the drink OUT of you.
There's not a whole lot to communicate about what the film's subject is that you can't understand from summary. What I mean is that I say it's a film about a pedophile priest who preyed on kids in California for decades and you pretty much understand the horror of that from the description. It's horrid and makes your soul shrivel up just thinking about it.
What you can't appreciate without seeing and hearing from this film is just how awful the rest of it is. There is so much "rest of it" that just...it boggles the mind. The three victims of this one priest speak and speak bravely, but they are all still so obviously hurting and broken even as they've become strong enough to confront the problem. I hate the notion that they are all broken people who go through this kind of abuse, and I don't believe that you can't ever get better and trust again and maybe even love God again. Still, that's what I saw.
The one male victim they talked to was so hurt, so angry, and yet so incisive. He walked over to a building, pointed out a room, and went, "That's where he sodomized me." A beat, then, "You have no idea how hard that was to say." And, because he and other victims in the second, third, or![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fourth parish that this priest went to were male (whereas the first had been female), no one immediately believed it could be possible that the priest had been responsible for the assault. Because, clearly, only faggots buggered little boys; this priest, why he was a good heterosexual buggerer. I wanted to stab someone. Hard. What's worse is that the priest got to him through his mother--whom he may or may not have seduced as well, with the intention of raping the boy (it was a little unclear). In one of the deleted scenes, the male victim was crying and saying that he'd often thought of killing himself but he didn't want to hurt his parents that way. The mother was telling him a bunch of false-sounding stuff about how that wouldn't help and he was too bright to do it. Even thinking she might have brought the monster close enough to hurt him out of her own selfish sexual need made me grind my teeth. If she'd really done it...fuck, man.
The monster in the home story is just...in the case of one of the female victims, the movie sets you up to believe her family--completely snowed by the priest--remained his staunch defenders. When the charges came up a second or third time, this with police involvement, he called them for bail and they posted it. The mother was sure, if he hadn't done anything, that nothing could happen to him. He then confessed he'd been in trouble before.
And then they had to call their daughter.
I was a complete mess watching this unfold--the brilliance of the way this movie is set up, the Jyonos (the family that had supported the priest) talk so calmly about their memories of "Father Ollie" that you expect they'd never been disabused of their love for him. Not so. The father, a elderly Japanese man, got on the phone and got his daughter to admit what she wouldn't to her mother, that, yes, Father Ollie had abused her. Mr. Jyono, obviously upset and self-recriminating and a bit of victim-blaming besides asked her why she never told him this had happened (since she was five).
She never told her father anyone was hurting her because she once heard her father say, when she was twelve or thirteen, that if anyone ever harmed his family, he would kill them. For love of her father, the daughter never said anything that would lead him to murder Father Ollie and thus get him in trouble with the law.
I lost it, folks. I burst into tears. Mr. Jyono, in the film, totally lost it, too. His wife looked like she wanted to die. His anger at himself for putting his daughter in a position where she felt she couldn't confess to him and be protected...it's the most holy thing in the entire movie. And that's saying a lot given all the high mucky-mucks of the church and the shots of the Vatican thrown into this thing. He, accurately, dismissed the terms "pedophile" and "abuse" (the former as irrelevant because it made the crime about the criminal's problems, the latter because it was soft-pedalling the truth). "My daughter was RAPED," he shouted, and I just cried and cried and cried. I'm talking tears falling down my cheeks, sobs and gasps, sinuses leaking, nose running, shuddering tears. Holy shit.
And then the daughter gets on to talk about what she lost in all this, and the saddest thing is that she still wants to get married in the church...but she can't have her father there because he won't go inside. They went to the Vatican with a sympathetic priest who goes around trying to help victims of abuse and force the church to address the sufferings and the problems in the system. No one will see them. The daughter and the other female victim go into St. Peter's to pray, and you see Mrs. Jyono stonily sitting besides the two women and they walk out under the famed statuary and what not and meet up with Mr. Jyono. Who has been pacing around in the plaza the entire time. He decries God, doesn't believe any longer, and his daughter breaks into tears at this. She so wants to have her faith back, it hurts her to see someone else reject faith altogether. Broke my goddamned heart.
Whew. That was draining. This is a terrific film. Well cut, well done, marvelous interviews, sad commentary on the world today.
Oh, and that priest? Roaming free in Ireland now after serving half his sentence. Half the movie is spent following him around on his perambulations, during which he freely leches at kids in a park or on the sidewalk. GROSS ME OUT. They don't have anything like Megan's Law there, either, so no one is obligated to inform the people living near him of his convictions or previous history of abusive behavior. Fan-fucking-tastic. Grossest scene in the whole movie? His writing to his victims, asking them to come to Ireland so they can all talk and "heal." The male victim's scorn of the man is amazing, and worth the rental alone. He's so disgusted by the idea of being collected up by this man so he might relive his former abuse, but he doesn't want to go specifically because he knows it won't help him. He couldn't give a shit what the priest thinks would help, and he says something to the effect of "It's not about what happens to him--revenge or his suffering or whatever. It's about me getting better." There's so much beauty in that, I started crying again.
...
Let me be the first to say I regret all the jokes I made about watching this movie and needing a drink. I could have had two texas-sized margaritas before watching it and I still would have been stone-cold sober after about twenty minutes. This isn't a movie that drives you to drink--the horror drives the drink OUT of you.
There's not a whole lot to communicate about what the film's subject is that you can't understand from summary. What I mean is that I say it's a film about a pedophile priest who preyed on kids in California for decades and you pretty much understand the horror of that from the description. It's horrid and makes your soul shrivel up just thinking about it.
What you can't appreciate without seeing and hearing from this film is just how awful the rest of it is. There is so much "rest of it" that just...it boggles the mind. The three victims of this one priest speak and speak bravely, but they are all still so obviously hurting and broken even as they've become strong enough to confront the problem. I hate the notion that they are all broken people who go through this kind of abuse, and I don't believe that you can't ever get better and trust again and maybe even love God again. Still, that's what I saw.
The one male victim they talked to was so hurt, so angry, and yet so incisive. He walked over to a building, pointed out a room, and went, "That's where he sodomized me." A beat, then, "You have no idea how hard that was to say." And, because he and other victims in the second, third, or
fourth parish that this priest went to were male (whereas the first had been female), no one immediately believed it could be possible that the priest had been responsible for the assault. Because, clearly, only faggots buggered little boys; this priest, why he was a good heterosexual buggerer. I wanted to stab someone. Hard. What's worse is that the priest got to him through his mother--whom he may or may not have seduced as well, with the intention of raping the boy (it was a little unclear). In one of the deleted scenes, the male victim was crying and saying that he'd often thought of killing himself but he didn't want to hurt his parents that way. The mother was telling him a bunch of false-sounding stuff about how that wouldn't help and he was too bright to do it. Even thinking she might have brought the monster close enough to hurt him out of her own selfish sexual need made me grind my teeth. If she'd really done it...fuck, man.The monster in the home story is just...in the case of one of the female victims, the movie sets you up to believe her family--completely snowed by the priest--remained his staunch defenders. When the charges came up a second or third time, this with police involvement, he called them for bail and they posted it. The mother was sure, if he hadn't done anything, that nothing could happen to him. He then confessed he'd been in trouble before.
And then they had to call their daughter.
I was a complete mess watching this unfold--the brilliance of the way this movie is set up, the Jyonos (the family that had supported the priest) talk so calmly about their memories of "Father Ollie" that you expect they'd never been disabused of their love for him. Not so. The father, a elderly Japanese man, got on the phone and got his daughter to admit what she wouldn't to her mother, that, yes, Father Ollie had abused her. Mr. Jyono, obviously upset and self-recriminating and a bit of victim-blaming besides asked her why she never told him this had happened (since she was five).
She never told her father anyone was hurting her because she once heard her father say, when she was twelve or thirteen, that if anyone ever harmed his family, he would kill them. For love of her father, the daughter never said anything that would lead him to murder Father Ollie and thus get him in trouble with the law.
I lost it, folks. I burst into tears. Mr. Jyono, in the film, totally lost it, too. His wife looked like she wanted to die. His anger at himself for putting his daughter in a position where she felt she couldn't confess to him and be protected...it's the most holy thing in the entire movie. And that's saying a lot given all the high mucky-mucks of the church and the shots of the Vatican thrown into this thing. He, accurately, dismissed the terms "pedophile" and "abuse" (the former as irrelevant because it made the crime about the criminal's problems, the latter because it was soft-pedalling the truth). "My daughter was RAPED," he shouted, and I just cried and cried and cried. I'm talking tears falling down my cheeks, sobs and gasps, sinuses leaking, nose running, shuddering tears. Holy shit.
And then the daughter gets on to talk about what she lost in all this, and the saddest thing is that she still wants to get married in the church...but she can't have her father there because he won't go inside. They went to the Vatican with a sympathetic priest who goes around trying to help victims of abuse and force the church to address the sufferings and the problems in the system. No one will see them. The daughter and the other female victim go into St. Peter's to pray, and you see Mrs. Jyono stonily sitting besides the two women and they walk out under the famed statuary and what not and meet up with Mr. Jyono. Who has been pacing around in the plaza the entire time. He decries God, doesn't believe any longer, and his daughter breaks into tears at this. She so wants to have her faith back, it hurts her to see someone else reject faith altogether. Broke my goddamned heart.
Whew. That was draining. This is a terrific film. Well cut, well done, marvelous interviews, sad commentary on the world today.
Oh, and that priest? Roaming free in Ireland now after serving half his sentence. Half the movie is spent following him around on his perambulations, during which he freely leches at kids in a park or on the sidewalk. GROSS ME OUT. They don't have anything like Megan's Law there, either, so no one is obligated to inform the people living near him of his convictions or previous history of abusive behavior. Fan-fucking-tastic. Grossest scene in the whole movie? His writing to his victims, asking them to come to Ireland so they can all talk and "heal." The male victim's scorn of the man is amazing, and worth the rental alone. He's so disgusted by the idea of being collected up by this man so he might relive his former abuse, but he doesn't want to go specifically because he knows it won't help him. He couldn't give a shit what the priest thinks would help, and he says something to the effect of "It's not about what happens to him--revenge or his suffering or whatever. It's about me getting better." There's so much beauty in that, I started crying again.
