In the hybrid documentary 'Procession,' filmmaker Robert Greene collaborates with six male survivors of clergy sex abuse.
But here, he eschews previous efforts’ experimental strutting for an abiding sensitivity, perhaps realizing that these men’s brave commitment to turning terrible memory into cathartic invention is too valuable and delicate to present as some arty look-what-I-did treatise.
It makes for two hours of excavation, contextualizing and release that is wholly devoted to the exploratory hearts of its subjects, and recognizing the journey’s impact. When we need to hear an “Are you OK?” or see someone show care, we do, the editing almost uncanny about it. Other times, the camera is a conscientious but gentle witness, finding details, angles, in-the-moment metaphors and framing that supports the story the men need to tell.
Individually, the men are thoroughly compelling figures — cracking wise one moment, their voice simply cracking the next. Their dedication to the project, and to each other, is invigorating and touching throughout. Ed, a tough contractor still trying to get his abuser indicted, chooses “All That Jazz” as a montage touchstone for his scene contrasting rituals of baptism and abuse.
The more outwardly broken figures are Joe, a quiet-voiced counselor with nightmares who allows some of the guys to help him find the lakehouse where his abuse took place, and Mike, all roiling anger, whose scene is a rageful telling-off of the Church review board that denied him justice. The men decided to cast one boy as their younger selves for each scene, a kid named Terrick, whose maturity and placid strength appears to help each man see themselves less as victims and more like survivors. The thick air of lost youth and live wounds isn’t lost on Terrick, either, with the camera catching him gently telling Ed after filming his scene, “I tried my best to tell your story.
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