Direction: Robert Greene
Country: USA
The American documentarian Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, 2016; Bisbee ’17, 2018) turns his look at the child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Procession, his seventh film, documents the painful therapeutic process endured by six men who have been struggling with trauma all their lives.
What’s interesting here is the different forms found by the victims in order to deal with the problem. Some are angrier than others, some are more anguished and less talkative, and some simply decided to forget most of the details. In all cases, the wounds are too deep to recover in full, a fact aggravated by the incredible lack of justice that normally involves these cases.
Greene’s documentary might have done a nice job in helping these traumatized men, but the film itself flows heavily, and our attention almost succumbs to its aimless structure and narrative fragmentation. It wasn’t bad, but the way it was presented was a bit of a letdown. With that said, the film still serves the purpose of exposing the evil kept hidden for so long and the debilitating consequences for those who fell into the hands of predatory clergy.
