A feature film about priests who abuse children is being released on 25 March. Which happens to be Good Friday.
Geddit? The sacrifice of the innocents. A conspiracy of religious hierarchs. Hand-washing by the secular authorities. I’m sure I can think of some more analogies if you give me time, but that’s enough to be going on with. Enough, certainly, for the distributors to boast that the movie is ‘controversially slated to be released on Easter [sic] Good Friday’.
As publicity stunts go, this isn’t subtle. But the film is. The Club, directed by the Chilean Pablo Larraín, sets out to perplex us from the first frame until the last.
It’s one of the finest films I’ve seen for years: a masterpiece of ambiguity that dares to suggest that the abuse of children by priests, though always morally repugnant, is psychologically and socially complex. If it wasn’t, the Church would have found a way to extinguish this fire long ago.
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