Catholic Church

The Club (2015)

André Crous

The Club is an unapologetic indictment of the sick structures that allow paedophile priests to continue their lives without facing justice

El ClubChile
4*

Director:
Pablo Larraín
Screenwriters:
Guillermo Calderón
Pablo Larraín
Daniel Villalobos
Director of Photography:
Sergio Armstrong

Running time: 95 minutes

Original title: El club

If there was ever a film to put the final coffin in the Catholic Church’s case for credibility after decades of allegations about sexual abuse, paedophilia and cover-ups that involved the rotation of sex offenders from one parish to the next, it is Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s The Club (El club). With a plot set in a coastal town in the very recent past, it examines the activities of a group of four former priests who have been banished to an isolated house, along with a former nun, where they are expected to repent for their sins, which all relate to child abuse.

One of the opening scenes is a stunner and sets the stage for an hour and a half of tension that ultimately ends with an act so monstrous the fury quickly boils over from within the viewer because these supposed messengers of God reveal themselves to be nothing more than self-centred criminals who destroy innocent people and animals in order to keep their skeletons intact. In this particular scene, a victim of one of the former priests arrives at the home and proceeds to publicly castigate the priest at the top of his voice by going into detail about the sex acts the priest committed with him when he was an altar boy.

Paedophiles are mentally ill, and they should be treated, but if they commit sexual acts with a minor, such behaviour ought to be looked upon the same way one regards the acts of a murderer – with disgust and abhorrence – because the two acts are very closely aligned. It might seem like charitable (what some might label “Christian”) behaviour to love and support these people, but when they refuse to change and demand forgiveness, either because they don’t know what they are doing or because they are sinners and Jesus died for their sins, too, we need to stand up and refuse to grant them forgiveness, because they insist on destroying others in the quest for (temporary) self-gratification.

The majority of the five people comprising the titular “club” in Larraín’s film, his first since the beautiful true-to-life No, which depicted Chile’s landmark referendum in 1988, cannot even bring themselves to admit they are gay, much less that they sexually abused the minors in their parishes, and the same goes for the nun, who was sent to the house after her mother had accused her of beating her adopted daughter, an act of which she still proclaims her innocence.

When a prisoner is seeking parole, the board has to examine whether the individual in question shows any remorse. If there is no contrition, the person remains a menace to society and should be kept isolated. On a side note, this was the major problem with another film shown at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the same year: the Czech documentary Daniel’s World (Danielův svět), whose main character never elicits any empathy from us because he revels in being sick and seeks acceptance and understanding from society instead of help.

Early in the film, Father García (Marcelo Alonso), a young adviser with a background in psychology, arrives on the scene with the goal of steering the priests onto the right path, but he is of little help, and the four men and one woman have a great deal of experience in manipulation, to which he eventually succumbs. This film is a tragic indictment of the human evils harboured, sometimes with pride, by the very priests who are meant to protect their flocks from the wolves, and when cold calculation is carried out with a smile, as is the case with Mother Monica (Antonia Zegers), we feel a collective chill running down our spine because we know how prevalent these people are across the world and how much damage they have caused to people everywhere.

The Club is unapologetic in its treatment of its characters, and that is as it should be, because any hesitation on the part of the filmmaker would have weakened the impact of the film. This is a serious topic that requires a blunt approach, and Larraín does not back down, even when it comes to showing the more graphic consequences of the former fathers’ decision to stay in the house rather than integrate back into society.

There are moments of hope for the characters, especially Father Vidal (Alfredo Castro), who calls himself the King of Repression and comes to closest to admitting his urges have persisted despite (or perhaps because of) the prohibition on receiving pleasure – masturbation is forbidden, of course, but so is taking long showers. Eventually, little matters because the evil these men (and woman) are capable of when push comes to shove will be shocking to even those who have followed the scandals of the Church through documentaries and fiction films over the past decade.

On the whole, this film suggests that the structures that kept in place these places of refuge for sex offenders should be burnt to the ground and take their culture of moral authority, divine entitlement and protection of one’s own with them on their way to Hell, which is without a doubt where these people belong.

Viewers who have problems with animal cruelty – especially inflicted on domesticated animals – would be well advised to steer clear of this film. The ghastly acts committed in the final act will hit you hard.

Viewed at the 2015 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival

By the Grace of God (2018)

André Crous

Based on real events, François Ozon’s By the Grace of God recounts the struggles of multiple middle-aged men in Lyon to come to terms with being sexually abused by their local priest in their youth.

By the Grace of GodFrance/Belgium
3.5*

Director:
François Ozon
Screenwriter:
François Ozon
Director of Photography:
Manuel Dacosse

Original title: Grâce à Dieu

Running time: 135 minutes

Religion is theatre, so it comes as little surprise that the opening act of François Ozon’s By the Grace of God, a film dealing with a real-life church abuse scandal in the French city of Lyon, is mostly about people in robes speaking their lines but ultimately just playing roles. And yet, the feeling of despair is ubiquitous and, especially in the film’s first third, close to suffocating.

The story, by now, is a notoriously well-trodden one. However, it bears repeating because it appears the (perhaps tens of) thousands of priests engaged in this abominable, sometimes decades-long behaviour, have not been properly held to account. Columnist Dan Savage has rightly noted that, “If kids got raped by clowns as often as they get raped by pastors, it would be against the law to take your kids to the circus.”

And yet, even some of those who have been raped or otherwise molested continue to take their own children to church, perhaps in the devastatingly naïve belief that their own experience was unique. In the meantime, however, children continue to be exposed to predators who talk about forgiveness as much as they commit sins against the vulnerable children in their care.

Ozon’s film is broadly divided into three parts, although he struggles to connect them and the transitions are often very abrupt. In the first and arguably the best act, Melvil Poupaud stars as Alexandre, a middle-aged actuary and family man from Lyon who has decided to open up to his family and the church about the abuse he suffered at the hands of a local priest, Bernard Preynat, in his youth. He is encouraged by the recent pronouncements of Philippe Barbarin, a cardinal and the archbishop of Lyon, against child abuse, and he divulges everything to a mediator from the church, who writes a report and arranges a meeting between Alexandre and his erstwhile abuser, the paedophile priest.

All of this happens in a tranquillity rife with tension as Alexandre shields himself from an emotional breakdown, but the turmoil is always bubbling beneath the surface. Watching all of this unfold feels like the film is stepping on our chest, slowly asphyxiating us with the knowledge that the Church always, ALWAYS protects its own. Alexandre initially views the church as an ally in the fight instead of an accomplice in the cover-up, but he is slowly disabused of this notion as the facts come to light.

These facts include the realisation that there were multiple victims of Father Preynat’s predatory behaviour, including the leads in the film’s two subsequent acts. The first is François (Denis Ménochet), who has become an outspoken atheist; the second is the slightly younger Emmanuel (Swann Arlaud), who suffers from epileptic seizures and still lives with his mother although he likes to boast that he is a “zebra”, a gifted child. The characters are all scarred in their own ways, and many of them have ended up in relationships with others who have gone through similar experiences, which seems to both soothe and compound the issues stemming from them. To fight back, they form the

Ozon’s decision to tell multiple stories gives a rich insight into the various ways in which people struggle with abuse, and by the end of the film, it has become obvious that there are victims – of Preynat, of the Catholic Church writ large and of other abusers – in many more people than we might have thought.

However, once the first act climaxes with a stomach-churning scene in which Alexandre is forced to hold hands with his abuser while praying for strength, the film’s drama stalls. Unlike Spotlight or the stunning documentary feature Deliver Us from Evil, both of which had narratives that continually revealed more and more of what was hidden and who did the hiding, By the Grace of God lands very few serious body blows in its second and third acts. Instead, it focuses on the affected characters’ domestic lives, which come across as complex but fragmentary and not particularly coherent.

The production is far from polished: The scenes with Alexandre feel like completely removed from those of the much less affluent François and Emmanuel. The latter two also seem more willing to wage a fight against the Church, even if it means exposing themselves and their families to the wagging tongues of their friends, acquaintances and the influential society at large in Lyon, a city whose massive basilica towers over it from the top of Fourvière hill.

While all the men’s stories are given coverage in the flashbacks, the film does not go the whole hog and accuse the Church of complete knowledge or committing a cover-up. In Cardinal Barbarin, we see a man who says the right things in public but stalls behind the scenes and is unwilling to change the way things have always been done. He is a conservative but, as far as we can tell, not engaging full-on in the obstruction of progress. And yet, his plodding is infuriating because it can only be read in the most selfish way possible: No matter what offences his fellow priests have committed, we must forgive them because God forgives us. Ozon leaves some room for us to interpret the events, but both Preynat and the Church are almost certain to be viewed as culpable for serious harm caused to scores of children over decades.

If you are not a believer, you will receive some clear evidence to justify your lack of belief. If you do believe in God, this film ought to make you question, once again, why such unspeakable abuse is allowed to happen day in and day out, seemingly “by the Grace of God”. 

Viewed at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival.

Jimmy’s Hall (2014)

André Crous

True story of Irish hero James Grafton, who fought for independence from those colonising his land and thoughts, shows the sickening power of the Church in Depression-era Ireland.

jimmy's hallUK/Ireland
3*

Director:
Ken Loach
Screenwriter:
Paul Laverty
Director of Photography:
Robbie Ryan

Running time: 110 minutes

Although independence is usually cause for celebration, attaining it from a colonial power is often just one struggle waged and won among others, many of which still have to be achieved. To some extent this was also true of the nation of Ireland: Following the at times very bloody Irish War of Independence of 1919–21, the heavily religious population enabled the Catholic Church to play a significant role in the administration of the country, which at times resembled a theocratic fiefdom rather than a fully fledged democratic system.

The infamous case of James “Jimmy” Gralton dates to the early days of the independent Republic of Ireland. Gralton had grown up in County Leitrim in the north of the country, just south of what would become the border with Northern Ireland after the War of Independence. He emigrated to the United States as a young man, returned to fight for his country’s freedom, and subsequently opened a dance hall in his small town, an event that the conservative church found reprehensible, and he eventually had to flee back to New York City when it seemed clear he would be thrown in jail.

After the boom and bust of the 1920s, at the height of the Great Depression, Gralton (Barry Ward) returned to his homeland in 1932. He reconnects with many people from a decade earlier who encourage him to re-open the centre for music, entertainment, learning and art that once carried his name. He decides to listen and even introduces them to jazz, but the Church, in the form of Father Sheridan (Jim Norton), takes matters into its own hands, ultimately leading to unprecedented action against the man who just wanted his fellow villagers to forget their troubles and be happy.

For those unfamiliar with Gralton’s story, the context is provided in two ways at the outset, although there will surely be details, like the name of the hall (Pearse-Connolly, in reference to two of the most famous casualties of the war), that slip past unnoticed. Along with the serene opening scene, set on a horse with cart in the beautiful Irish countryside, the viewer gets numerous supertitles that sketch the political environment of the time and explain the simmering tensions between the loyalists and the Republicans, although a new, slightly less right-wing party came to power in the early 1930s and filled some with optimism.

In the first few scenes, there is also a smattering of flashbacks to the early 1920s, during the heyday of the dance hall that became the thing of legend to those who had reached their teens by the time of Gralton’s return. However, these flashbacks are elegantly preceded by just the right amount of sparse hints in the dialogue about Gralton’s history, and especially his feud with fellow townsman Commander O’Keefe (Brían F. O’Byrne), to set the scene without filling in all the blanks.

“Scars on the heart … take a long time to heal”, says Father Sheridan, speaking as much about others as about himself, and this single phrase sufficiently illuminates the collision course on which he and Gralton find themselves, although the ever-present fear of communism, and of course of losing control, also animates him greatly. The fear is far from irrational, although his reaction to it paints him as a man out to be vengeful and even authoritarian. As is so often the case, in films from The Magdalene Sisters to Philomena, the Church’s callous pursuit of power is best demonstrated through its brutal disregard for the well-being of children, and some of the most powerful scenes in Jimmy’s Hall feature the adults of tomorrow.

Even to those who don’t know anything about this particular episode, or about this period in Irish history more generally, the story may seem slightly predictable at turns. However, it is to the credit of longtime filmmaker Ken Loach that he never dwells on sentimentality too long and provides us with dialogue scenes that are heavy with words but also compelling character development. The character of the priest has to be mentioned here, as his initial black-and-white view of the world becomes slightly more shaded towards the end, making him a far more complex character than we expect, even while his repulsively unsympathetic behaviour remains.

The major issue at the heart of the story, at least from the Church’s point of view, is whether Gralton is about to embark on a campaign of brainwashing that would turn people into crimson-red communists who will follow him, the Irish Pied Piper, away to the Hamelin of a Marxist dreamland. Father Sheridan phrases the alleged attacks on Irish tradition slightly differently, by talking about the “Los Angelisation of our culture”, and he tells his church-goers that they face a fundamental choice: “Is it Christ? Or is it Gralton?”

By demonising Gralton as the Antichrist, he succeeds not only in tarring him with the brush of evil but also in striking fear in the hearts of his congregants, many of whom may not know better than to put blind trust in the words of their all-too-human priest. The consequences are tragic, but Loach is also an inspirational filmmaker who shows us how Gralton’s stay in Ireland seemed to have changed people for the better.

Although this film was widely considered to be the last by the veteran filmmaker, who at the time of release was in his late 70s and had been making films for more than 45 years (his sophomore production, Kes, released in 1969, often ranks near the top of lists of the best British films ever made), his subsequent film, I, Daniel Blake, would go on to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival just two years later, in 2016. 

Black Narcissus (1947)

André Crous

UK
3*

Directors:
Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Screenwriters:
Michael Powell
Emeric Pressburger
Director of Photography:
Jack Cardiff

Running time: 100 minutes

Nuns on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In Black Narcissus, Deborah Kerr is the sister superior tasked with establishing a convent on a cliff in the Himalayas, “at the back of beyond”, overlooking a valley hundreds of feet below. This convent, Saint Faith, is housed in Mopu Palace, which used to be the harem of a general living nearby. Sister Clodagh (Kerr) is trying to keep it together, but the winds are howling 24 hours a day, and the crisp mountain air has awakened “nature” inside the newcomers. The sisterhood is losing its nerve, and it is up to Sister Clodagh to get everybody back in line; to do this, however, she must first deal with her own “ghosts”.

These “ghosts” refer to Clodagh’s flashbacks, seen now and again, whenever she spots something that reminds her of a specific incident in her former life. These objects that facilitate the transition from present to past are very awkward and quite simplistic, but the flashbacks themselves do serve an important purpose, namely to show us that Clodagh’s path has had its twists and turns and that she joined the order so as to escape something else; if she were to be confronted with the same situation once more, what decision would she make this time?

Clodagh is joined by four other sisters, all of whom lose their minds over the course of the story, and at least two of them, Sister Honey and Sister Ruth, become absolutely hysterical. This hysteria becomes unbearable, and while Kathleen Byron (starring as Sister Ruth) does a fine job of seeming possessed, her eyes bulging out of their sockets, she is also the object of the camera’s affection, and Cardiff lights her face beautifully, accentuating her eye-line while obscuring the rest of her visage.

Black Narcissus earns its place as a landmark Technicolor production, and the film’s director of photography, Jack Cardiff, who would go on to light and shoot the equally breathtaking Red Shoes the following year, doesn’t disappoint for a moment. However, for all its colourful images and exquisite lighting, the film is rather bland, perhaps because some of the emotions are so extreme that one easily becomes indifferent to the nuns’ emotional turmoil.

While Sister Ruth snaps at all the women around her, finding fault with everything they do, a new girl arrives at the convent – Kanchi, a young girl with many piercings, played by Jean Simmons – who needs to be educated, since she has arrived on the doorstep of the General’s agent, Mister Dean, and expects to be made his bride. Fortunately, for his and for our sakes, he has no interest in the girl. Her character is terribly irritating and cannot be taken very seriously: In every scene, she has a lascivious look on her face that drips with heat, and while her appearance is clearly meant to be juxtaposed with the nuns and their white habits, her slithering around the General, who quickly gives her what she wants, is rather embarrassing. Luckily, when Ruth imitates Kanchi in a later scene, she is not successful in her attempts at seduction and therefore only embarrasses one of the parties: herself.

Throughout the film, we wait for the inevitable. We get a few very beautiful shots of the bell being rung at the top of the precipice, and it is rather obvious what all of this is leading up to. The power play between the nuns themselves and between the nuns and the natives, including the General and Mister Dean, has the most resonance, and directors Powell and Pressburger, together with Jack Cardiff, compose beautiful shots, particularly notable in some of the first scenes, in which ceiling fans, or their shadows, may be spotted in every frame.

Black Narcissus, shot almost entirely inside Pinewood Studios, with painted backdrops standing in for the actual Himalayas, wants to tackle the conflict between human nature and the restrictions of an order such as that found at a convent, but given the influence of the Catholic League of Decency at the time, this film was not allowed to go very far in its investigation, and it falls woefully short of communicating anything of real substance. But Cardiff, as he would do in The Red Shoes, creates images that sear into one’s memory, and it is his work that manages to elevate the film into the realm of the “must-sees”.