Deliver Us From Evil

Amy Berg’s excellent and difficult documentary looks clearly at the full enormity of pedophilia scandals within the Catholic Church. Berg’s central figure is a talkative but eerily dissociated Father Oliver O’Grady, the relentless sexual predator who exploited his Northern California parishioners for 20 years, leaving a snarl of ruined lives from Turlock to San Andreas. Clearly, though, the enigma of O’Grady is only the beginning; Deliver Us From Evil gives voice to many angry and well-founded dissatisfactions with the Church’s leadership, and compellingly documents a deep dysfunction ingrained within its culture. The film keeps its temper, moving intrepidly forward into increasingly difficult material, at once broadening the view and clarifying it. Neither hectoring nor pandering, it is a welcome reminder of how investigative documentaries should be done.