I first saw saw Star Wars when I was six or seven years old, which must have been around 1985 or 86. I watched it with a friend of mine, or so I remember. More than thirty years have passed since then, so some of what I recall might be heavily distorted. It probably is. What’s important however is that I still have specific scenes from the movie, and from that day, imprinted in my memory. Us sitting on the carpet in front of the TV. I was most probably completely oblivious to the world around me.
Movie About Church Sexual Abuse Is a Contentious Hit in Poland →
Alex Marshall, writing for The New York Times:
“Clergy,” a new movie by the director Wojciech Smarzowski, starts with three priests drinking vodka until they can barely speak. One then drives drunk to a parishioner’s apartment and mumbles his way through the giving of last rites.
The picture of Poland’s priesthood only goes downhill from there. The priests steal money from their congregations, spy on each other, and exploit their connections with politicians, journalists and the police.
But much of “Clergy” focuses on one issue: Clerical child abuse, which the movie says the church covered up. In one scene, it incorporates accounts from real people who say they were abused.
This may not sound like the plot for a blockbuster movie — let alone one that features a heavy dose of comedy — but “Clergy” is a smash hit in Poland. It opened on Sept. 28, and more than 1.7 million people saw it during its first week, according to Kino Swiat, the movie’s distributor. That is a huge figure for a country of 38 million.
I thought that our current “democratic” government wound actually ban it outright.
