Not What I Expected

I did my best to reserve judgment about this project until I had seen it, which I did finally last week.

I don't mind saying that the snap judgments on both sides were more than a little irritating:

Irrational Position 1: "The Catholic Church is an evil entity that should be burned to the ground. All priests are child molesters, and all Catholics are ignorant, homphobic biggots who are duped into believing x, y, and z, etc., etc."

Irrational Position 2: "Why do they have to keep bringing up these incidents? Can't we just move on? Pedophelia is terrible, but it's not fair the way everyone is persecuting the Church (my wife is a teacher, and I note the similarities between this argument and parents whose kids do really bad things and then come in to the school and demand to know "Well, what did you do to all those other REALLY bad kids?", while ignoring the fact that their little darling is on the road to delinquency). It's all the fault of the blasted media -- there's a conspiracy to bring down Holy Mother the Church because she's the only organization speaking the truth in our society. The problem has nothing at all to do with secrecy, etc., etc."

I guess what I was worried about was an oversimplified account that treated the issues involved in absolute terms, as black or white. I was pleasantly surprised to see the filmmakers grapple with the complexity of the personalities involved. This was evidenced by Plummer's thoughtful portrayal of Card. Law. He does not represent Law as evil incarnate, a rather extreme view held by some, but rather as a deeply flawed perhaps, and conflicted, but very human character. I also thought the scene where the victim prayed with his abuser for forgiveness was extremely powerful and demonstrated that the residual effects of abuse are many, varied, and complex. Similarly, the film doesn't represent Mitchell Garabedian as a saint, but rather as a very human lawyer who seeks justice, but who also makes mistakes and has his own axe to grind. No one character is 100% sympathetic or unsympathetic, which makes it more realistic.