Sins of the Father, by Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff, Santa Fe Reporter [Santa Fe NM], March 7, 2007

Sins of the Father

By Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff
Santa Fe Reporter [Santa Fe NM]
March 7, 2007

http://sfreporter.com/articles/publish/movies-030707-deliver-us-from-evil.php

Deliver Us from Evil delivers, but is hard to accept.

Why is there pleasure in torturing ourselves with the horrors of the world—and why are the films (and other works of art) that do so effectively taken the most seriously?

For most of human history, to see pain and suffering was a call to action—our sphere of action as large as our sphere of knowledge. Now, all the world's pain is piped in through newspapers, television, movies and the Internet, with very little we can do about it. The gulf between the horrors we know about and what we can do about them is wider than it has ever been. This has serious psychological consequences, and many people simply turn away from painful knowledge because, "What's the point of knowing and suffering if I can't do anything about it?"

Oliver O’Grady delivers no one from evil.

During Deliver Us From Evil I swung my fist at the air, gritted my teeth and clenched my eyes against the tears that burned. Absolutely infuriating, frustrating and penetrating, Amy Berg's Oscar-nominated documentary chronicles the case of Father Oliver O'Grady, the most notorious pedophile in Catholic Church history, and the children, now grown, whose lives he devastated. It is the masterfully created study of a deviant and the callous, calculated actions of an institution that cared more about self-preservation than kids' lives.

From 1973, until he went to jail in 1993, O'Grady used his position as priest to molest boys and girls, including a 9-month-old baby girl, whom he raped. As allegations arose, he was shuttled from parish to parish, one step ahead of the law, by Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahoney. Berg makes it painfully clear that Mahoney was aware of O'Grady's issues but chose to shield him from scrutiny in order to protect his own career. Mahoney has since been promoted to Cardinal, a position he retains to this day.

Berg opts against insinuating herself into her film in the Michael Moore style popular with many documentary filmmakers working today. Hers is a lens omniscient, an invisible eye. How she convinced O'Grady himself to let her set that eye down inside a church and his home and interview him at length is curious. Chalk it up to arrogance, disassociation, denial and the culture of repentance. These scenes—O'Grady meek and humble, his voice soft as velvet as he euphemizes his crimes—are some of the most psychologically fascinating and creepy ever captured on camera. In one, O'Grady discusses an invitation he has extended to his victims to visit him face to face so they can make peace and wish the best for each other. He then looks directly into the camera and, with a wry and beguiling smile, says to these now grown recipients of his rape and sodomy, "Godspeed." His eyes twinkle mischievously.

DELIVER US FROM EVIL

Written and directed by Amy Berg

With Thomas Doyle, Monsignor Cain, Oliver O'Grady, Cardinal Roger Mahoney, Nancy Sloan, Maria Jyono, Bob Jyono, Ann Jyono, Jane De Groot, Case De Groot, John Manly, Mary Gail Frawley O'Dea and Bill Hodgman

CCA
101 min.
NR

If O'Grady's interviews are some of the most disturbing in documentary history, the interviews with the victims and their parents are some of the most gut-wrenchingly sad. Sitting on the couch in their living room, surrounded by the trinkets and knick-knacks of familial life, the mother and father of one of O'Grady's victims tell the story of the rape of their 5-year-old daughter with an unfathomable agony that becomes the audience's own.

So why go? Why experience unfathomable agony, disgust, rage? And why, after feeling all this, leave the theater and say that Deliver Us from Evil is an incredible film? Because it guides audiences to the dark edge of human experience, the precipice overlooking the void that is evil, grabs viewers by the wrist and makes them touch it. And after touching it, it is possible to gather coats and bags, walk out into the sunshine, wipe squinting, bloodshot eyes and, having been delivered to evil, be delivered from it.