Twist of Faith

Sometimes, I think that the biggest problem with Hollywood movies is that they present too clear of a distinction between good and evil, as though there were always simple answers about where our sympathies should lie, when, in fact, almost everyone has some redeeming qualities, and even the best of us are riddled with sin. The documentary form seems like a good place for complexity on these issues, because it deals with real people and not the cookie-cutter characters of Scriptwriting 101. In Kirby Dick’s documentary Twist of Faith, though, it’s hard to imagine how to cast the story without clearly setting up a despicable and irredeemable villain. This is the tale of a man who confronts the priest who sexually molested him when he was a teen, and the church that abetted and then covered up the molestation. When you’ve got an extremely wealthy, international organization that uses its resources to help child molesters find and then evade their victims, well, you’ve got a villain. You also have a disturbing and arresting film that will leave you emotionally wrung out. Highly effective, well structured and illuminating filmmaking, suffering only from the necessarily overly simple ethics of the story that it tells.