Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 23, 2021

Many current filmmakers have been expanding the art of documentaries, but none quite so boldly or originally as Robert Greene. His films, which include Kate Plays Christine and Bisbee 17, embody a philosophy of nonfiction that reaches into the very grammar of the genre. His new film, Procession, which comes to Netflix on Friday, follows in that path, showing his participants developing the movies stories, which he then presents in the form of fictions that he directs. But Procession also takes this concept to more urgent extremes, because the films main participants are six men who, as children, were sexually assaulted by Catholic priests. In 2018, Greene, as the film relates, saw a television news report about them and their attorney, Rebecca Randles, as they came forward publicly to state their charges against the priests whod abused them and to publicize the Churchs stonewalling of investigations. He contacted Randles and laid the groundwork for making a filmnot about these men but with them. What this collaboration means, both in practice and emotionally, for them and for Greeneand for the art and the ethics of filmmaking itselfis the subject of Procession.

In effect, Greene questions the very nature of cinematic authorship. The credits of the film declare that it was made primarily by the six men: Joe Eldred, Mike Foreman, Ed Gavagan, Dan Laurine, Michael Sandridge, and Tom Viviano. Greene brings them and Randles together with Monica Phinney, a drama therapist, and shows the group working together, and teaming up in smaller units, to discuss and set the parameters for the scripted projects, which the men will write and Greene will direct. The scripts that the men produce reveal a wide range of approaches to their experiences of abuse. Sandridge crafts a story set in a church, in which he depicts a priest with evil green laser eyes and portrays his childhood self as a heroic bearer of witness. Gavaganwho dreams of telling a story like those of Marvel superheroes vanquishing the fucking forces of darknesswrites a horrific dramatization of his physical abuse, in the priests vestry. (There is nothing sexually explicit in the action.) Foremans two-part script first depicts the aftermath of his abuse, when his mother, unaware of what happened, bakes a cake for the predatory priest and drops a terrified but silent young Mike off at the priests house to deliver it; then, it renacts (with an element of wish-fulfilling fantasy) his meeting with the Churchs independent review board that, in 2013, hid behind the statute of limitations to dismiss his claims.

Procession is a documentary about the making of these short films, in which Greene integrates idea and action, process and effect, and, along the way, probes the distinctive powers of fiction and nonfiction. The men decide that theyll act in one anothers movies, and agree that their younger selves will all be played by one child actor, the casting of whom is a part of the film, too. (The boy whos selected, named Terrick, is a remarkably tough-minded and steadfast performer; he has the support of his parents on the setthey act in one scene, tooand they discuss how the family decided to let him take part in the film.) But, most crucially, in preparing to work with Phinney, Greene, and one another, the men unavoidably and painfully bear witness, on camera, in unbearably sharp detail, to the abuse that they experiencedand the enduring aftermath and long-term effects of their trauma.

As Phinney explains, the clinical purpose of dramatizing trauma is putting it out into the world in order to take it back in through the logical and reasonable part of our brains. For Greene, the cinema, with its power of montageits blend of drama and documentary, of staging and behind-the-scenes planningoffers a way to break the silence and foster cathartic bursts of self-recognition and self-recovery. To do so, he calls attention to the very question of cinematic authorship. In realizing the mens scripted scenes, he directs with great empathy, albeit somewhat impersonallyseemingly by design. Though directing a drama usually means taking other peoples stories and inflecting them with ones own creative vision, here Greene virtually makes himself into their instrument, while nonetheless injecting an element, a tone, that also adds a vast conceptual layer to the project. He emphasizes the melodramatic aspects of the mens scripts, relying on expressive lighting effects, theatrically intensified performances, and exaggeratedly emotive music. The point is clear: in linking the mens stories to the history of Hollywood movie dramas, Greene points out all the more clearly the kinds of stories that classic Hollywood didnt tell, and connects the silences of mainstream movies with the silences that society at large long imposed concerning sexual abuse.

The essential element that distinguishes Procession from staged drama is its documentary aspect, the power of the film to record the making of it, the work on which the production of the scripted scenes depends. Procession offers some of the most extraordinary location scouting ever done on camera. The men who take part in the film have a relentless, agonized drive to revisit the specific sites where they were abused. Sandridge, who visits the church that was the place of his abuse, speaks of the physical point thats crucial for each mans confrontation with his trauma. Foreman finds the exact porch at the exact house where his mother dropped him off, and his film is shot there. Eldred finds the porch of a house where he had been victimized, but is too overwhelmed to film there. Gavagan, unable to film in the actual vestry in which he was abused, meticulously reconstructs it as a set, which he and the other men build together. The most extended and anguished site-specific search involves a complex of lake houses where Laurine and his brother, Tim, were abused, and which proves appallingly triggering for both men. After a long search, Laurine finds an exact spot: a now-overgrown path where he was subjected to a shockingly cruel manipulation. This is the fucking path, he says. This is the path where I broke the fishing rod. Tim confirms it: This is the spot. Its an extraordinary echo of a moment in the greatest of all documentaries, Claude Lanzmanns Shoah, in which Simon Srebnik, a survivor of the extermination camp in the village of Chelmno, observes the long-bulldozed site where it was situated, and says, This is the place. Like Shoah, Procession does more than bear witness to atrocities; it uses the artistic power of the cinema to inscribe them in history.

Read the original:

Procession, Reviewed: An Astonishing Collaboration with Victims of Sexual Abuse - The New Yorker

Category: Shoah
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