UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Erica Abeel
Many American filmmakers have the bad habit, in my view, of taking an impartial stance when it comes to stories about the behavior of borderline criminal characters. Consider such feature films as Margin Call by J.C. Chandor and, more recently, Arbitrage by Nicholas Jarecki, which follow the toxic maneuvers of financial miscreants yet fastidiously refrain from passing judgment, as if the directors were mesmerized, mental functions on hold, by the mere sight of a senior partner at Goldman Sachs who flies to an Asian tailor for fittings of handmade suits.
That’s why documentaries have become essential. Like the blessedly biased MSNBC, they’re not afraid to stake out positions, offer outrage a bullhorn. Most crucially, perhaps, hard-hitting documentaries air abuses by the powerful that mainstream media lacks the cojones to expose. Now Alex Gibney, preeminent documentarian and a specialist in the abuse of power, weighs in with the superb Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God, which tackles the subject of child sex crimes and cover-up in the Catholic church.
You may think you’ve been there before — sexcapades of the clergy have received ample exposure in the press; and Amy Berg’s 2006 docu Deliver us from Evil fired the opening salvo. But Gibney (awarded a 2007 Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side) takes you places you won’t have have imagined. His new film (translated as “My Most Grievous Fault”) winds its way from the heartland of Milwaukee, through the churches of Ireland — all the way to the highest offices of the Vatican.
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