Deliver Us From Evil

I watched this one on the recommendation of Niousha after I complained at work about all the downer documentaries I was watching. This one was even worse! It's an example of, like Dear Zachary, two hours of something that completely wrecks you, but then they try to do what they can to not let the ending be too depressing. It didn't work though. Marggy was watching with me this time, though, so it felt like less of a punishment to get through this one.

Religion is a super touchy issue. I'm not really one for organized religion in general and it was interesting to go into this with that perspective. Marggy and I argued about what it means to continue to be a part of an institution with such corruption within itself. To, as a person, choose this group. It's a tricky situation, I guess. What part of you can say I can't be a part of that because of what is happening within the church and what part is able to say that this is just happening as a small percentage of isolated events from a small percentage of the priests? We didn't really come to any conclusion on that, but it's just interesting to think about. The idea of being a part of a religion like that is totally foreign to me, so I don't know if I would even have the necessary tools to even begin to come to a conclusion.

One thing that surprised me about the doc first off was that the documentaries filmmakers let that dude just roam around that park as he talked about the fact that he was not attracted to adults, but rather children in bathing suits, in underwear, etc. I don't know if they were going for a kind of disturbing tone to his scenes with the children's playing in the background as he spoke of his crimes, but that I think was almost too much for me. Like, maybe just a little over the line and not really necessary. To see a convicted child molester stare at children in a park and talk about his past abuse of them. Yuck.

It was an interesting tool when they slowly relived what this doc is about. There was no opening teaser to explain, but as we got into it, it became clear. You could find this on tv and go into it not knowing what was going on and we don't really get that messages fully until about 10 minutes in. While watching more and more, I don't know how many times I rolled my eyes at this bullshit excuses and backtracking from the priests and bishops who knew what was going on.

One thing that became completely clear to me as I got into it was that Oliver O'Grady was completely a naccist. In a different way than Billy MItchell or Troy Duffy...who are both to a comical degree. This psycho was basically the most honest person thought this entire thing. I asked my sister, the researcher of all things anti-social personality disorder related, to give me teh signs for narcissism. Unlike wit sociopathy, they recognize the difference between right and wrong but they do it anyway because they want to. But like sociopaths, they can't feel empathy, so they can't feel for their victims. The victims' feelings don't matter that only feelings that matter are theirs. And the dude was smiling and smirking and being flippant throughout the whole thing! The part where he wrote the letter to all his victims because he wanted them to come and air their grievances? That was completely fucked up. Sorry for the language. But that was insane. The whole idea that he would agree to do this documentary is unimaginable. And completely narcissistic.

Over all, I think it was really nicely done. I didn't really like the shots of O'Grady walking places and sitting around because it seems like they were telling him to do that stuff and it seemed forced, but it was cut together well and the interview footage meshed well with the action.