‘Procession’ Review: Filmmaking is Healing in an Extraordinary Doc on the Trauma of Catholic Church Sexual Abuse
variety.comGuy Lodge Film CriticReconstruction in documentary filmmaking is an eternally divisive technique: What some deem vivid and immediate, others find distancing and artificial, cloaking and blurring reality in the language of fiction cinema.
Yet what if the reconstructions don’t just feature the documentary’s real-life subjects, but are expressly conceived and realized by them — not recreating reality so much as their lingering, haunted memories thereof?
That’s a different proposition entirely, as is “Procession,” a risky, wrenching film in which celebrated docmaker Robert Greene frequently surrenders the directorial reins to his subjects and collaborators: six middle-aged, middle-American men living with the trauma of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic Church priests and clergymen.
With each of these survivors given the means and support to make an interpretive short film rooted in their decades-old experience, “Procession” is intricately woven from the amateur filmmakers’ original work, alongside Greene’s patient, empathetic observation of their creative process.
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