Oscar-nominated 'Faith'
debuts on HBO
Twist of Faith, the Oscar-nominated documentary
debuting
tonight at 10
on HBO, opens with the words "Toledo, Ohio," and the taped deposition
of a priest.
The Middle American town, the beefy, small-mouthed cleric - the images
are haunting, and they're meant to be, for they also haunt Anthony
Comes, the firefighter, father, husband, hometown guy and working-class
Roman Catholic who is at the heart of this documentary and who, as it
turns out, has just learned that his brand new dream house is five
doors down from the parochial high school counselor who he says
molested him when he was 14.
What follows is a riveting and heartbreaking account of one man's
journey into the thick of what most Americans now know...
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Pain of abuse
lingers in
vivid 'Twist'
There's something ordinary and familiar about the
sexual
abuse scenario
in the HBO documentary ''Twist of Faith." A Toledo priest takes boys to
his lakeside cottage for weekends of spiritual guidance, plies them
with booze and adult freedoms, and inflicts himself on them at night.
The next day, and the next month, and the next year, the boys block out
the pain and the shame; decades later, of course, the pain and the
shame erupt.
It's the classic story we've been hearing in the news for years now,
and, from sheer repetition, it has taken on an almost boilerplate
quality. It's so commonplace, it has begun to lose its emotional
resonance in the telling. That's one of the valuable gifts of ''Twist
of Faith,"which premieres tonight at 10. It once again personalizes the
priest
abuse scandal, particularizing the tragedy so vividly...
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A man's wrenching 'Twist'
(3 1/2 STARS). The level of intimacy achieved in "Twist of Faith" is so
unsettling and deep that one wonders how it could have possibly been
achieved. It is one thing to hear adult victims of sexual abuse by
Catholic priests speak out in uneasy voices on TV and radio. It is yet
another, far more potent thing to be allowed into a victim's home, life
and struggle to come to grips with what happened...
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Abuse survivor
leads audience through painful aftermath
The numbers are staggering: thousands of accusers filing claims of
sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic priests, millions of dollars paid
in settlements across the country, countless families devastated by the
crisis within their church. But for his documentary "Twist of Faith"
(airing at 10 tonight on HBO), Kirby Dick wanted to tell just one
story: of a victim turned survivor...
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Wounded Souls: Director Kirby
Dick exposes the psychic scars of abuse
At the beginning of the HBO
documentary Twist of Faith: America Undercover, which was
nominated earlier this year for an Academy Award and gets its
television debut this Tuesday, firefighter Anthony Comes gives a
personal video tour of his Toledo, Ohio, firehouse
� courtesy of a
camera provided to him by director Kirby Dick. Comes obviously loves
his job, and when he trains the camera on the iconic fire pole, he can
still conjure the sentiment of what...
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A rebuke to those who dismissed Mystic River's
Greek tragic symmetries as jerry-rigged, the documentary Twist of
Faith
recounts a real-life case where the specter of childhood sex abuse
endlessly seeps into the present. Tormented by memories of being
molested as a teenager, Tony Comes, now an adult with a family,
unknowingly moves in five doors away from his alleged abuser...
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THE
SAN FRANCISCO BAY
"This crisply
edited, painfully honest doc from
director Kirby Dick (Twist) views the Catholic church's
wide-ranging molestation scandal through the eyes of one victim:
blue-collar family guy Tony Comes of Toledo, Ohio. (We're also privy to
the feelings of his wife and other family members, including his
children, thanks to Dick's preferred method of having some of his film
shot...
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You gotta have 'Faith'
Kirby Dick, the notorious documentary filmmaker
behind such
films as "Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist"
(1997) and "Derrida" (2002), returns with "Twist of Faith," fresh from
the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival, and sporting an
honest-to-goodness Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Feature (it
lost to "Born Into Brothels").The powerful and provocative new "Twist
of Faith" tells the story of
Ohio firefighter and all-American family man Tony Comes, who was
molested as a boy by a Catholic priest, and, as an adult, attempts to
sue...
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Dennis Gray sexually
molested Tony Comes. The two Toledo, Ohio, men appear in Kirby Dick's
superbly disgusting documentary, although never in the same shot.
Images of the former priest invade Comes' thoughts when making love to
his wife and potty-training his young son. "No pill, no psychologist is
ever going to completely take it away," charges Comes, now 35...
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"It's in extreme experiences that we understand what it means to be
human," Kirby Dick said at Sundance on the day he heard that his film,
"Twist of Faith," was nominated for an Academy Award. The film takes on
the front-page issue of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and
follows a handsome, emotional firefighter who seeks an apology from an
abusing priest and the church hierarchy. Dick gave the family
camcorders, so that the violent emotional saga of Tony Comes and his
wife, Wendy, is punctuated by middle-of-the-night soul-seeking. It's
not the camcorder footage that nails audiences to their seats, though;
it's a tightly paced narrative that takes us right along on the
Comeses' marriage-mangling journey...
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Minneapolis/St. Paul
In the wake of the child
abuse scandals that have dogged the Catholic
Church, this Oscar-nominated doc by Kirby Dick (Sick)
focuses on the experiences of Tony Comes, a Toledo firefighter who
discovers that the priest who molested him when he was a boy lives just
a few houses down the block from his. As painful memories come flooding
back, the victim becomes consumed with anger--to the degree that his
emotional stability and his marriage are both seriously threatened.
Still, Comes decides to go public and files a lawsuit in hopes of
receiving an apology from the Toledo diocese (which lied to the Comes
family about its knowledge of the abuser's activities). As Comes
connects with the priest's other victims and a larger network of fellow
survivors, he begins a positive, if bumpy, healing process. Dick's
approach is intensely intimate: Both Comes and his wife provide their
own footage, including the moment they talk to their young daughter
about what to do if the abuser ever approaches her. Ultimately, Comes's
personal odyssey reveals what others like him have discovered: a
secretive, well-funded, and well-represented worldwide religious
institution that has appeared prepared to protect its own even if it
means telling lies. And yet Comes still feels a strong connection to
the faith, which makes the film all the more tragic and compelling... MORE
Powerful HBO film shows how Toledoan copes
with his sexual abuse by a priest
For almost 20 years, Toledo fireman Tony Comes carried around a painful
secret from his past: Starting at the age of 14, he says, he had been
repeatedly molested by a Catholic priest, a religion teacher
at
Central Catholic High School and a friend, someone he'd known
and
trusted...
MORE
Oscar-nominated
"Twist of Faith" is a powerful and damning look at the long-term impact
of sexual abuse, as well as the less-than-exemplary response of
Catholic Church officials to allegations of priestly molestationA
powerful and
damning look at the longterm impact of...
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Kirby
Dick's Oscar-nominated "Twist of Faith" puts a face to the media
stories in recent years about allegations of sex abuse by Catholic
priests. The face belongs to Tony Comes of Toledo, Ohio, and add to
that the faces of his wife, Wendy, and even his young children, family
and friends. The film reveals with devastating intimacy the mental
anguish of a person struggling to come to terms with crimes committed
against him 20 years before...
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When I went to see the truly spectacular IN THE REALMS OF THE UNREAL
just before the end of the year, I started talking to the
film's
publicist, who told me that she was also working on Kirby
Dick's new
film. This was still well before it was nominated for Best Documentary
Feature at the Oscars, but I was interested immediately. I think Kirby
Dick is one of the most consistently entertaining documentarians
working right now, so when she offered to send me a screener, I was
thrilled...
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Taking an unblinking approach to tough subject
matter also extends to
two arresting documentaries that in lesser hands might have come off as
ham-fisted or merely opportunistic. Kirby Dick's
Oscar-nominated “Twist
of Fate" examines child molestation in the Catholic church with
a raw
candor and bold honesty rarely seen in similar, and far lesser, news
reports on the same subject...MORE
**** "Twist of Faith," a
potent and
meditative new documentary,
explores the impact of Gray's improprieties by following
several months
in the life of one of his victims. By putting a single, very
recognizably human face onto the scandal that has ravaged the Catholic
community, Twist of Faith personalizes the
overwhelming statistics
and unthinkable violations. This isn't a story about how
thousands of
youths were betrayed by the institution that was supposed to protect
them; this is a bruising chronicle of how one life was damaged nearly
to the point of ruin...
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Dick's feature is a forthright portrait of the damage that eddies
outward from child abuse, finding, after some searching, one Toledo,
Ohio, victim to be the center of the piece, a 34-year-old firefighter
and loyal Catholic with a wife and small daughter, who discovers that
his alleged abuser lives five doors down, a priest whose videotaped
depositions - emotionless, amoral - are the most chilling part of this
disturbing, heartfelt, unflinching, forthright film...
MORE
A married father of two with a loving wife and a decent job, Tony Comes
might be the poster boy for surviving sexual abuse. Molested by a
Catholic priest who, as Comes recalls, would go from fellating teenage
boys to officiating communion in the space of an hour, Comes first
appears in Kirby Dick's documentary as a stoic, nose-to-the-grindstone
sort, not afraid to cry but not eager to either...
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