D

Years ago a recording was released of newly-composed piano music that an English woman claimed had been “channeled” to her from great composers of the past. The pieces turned out to sound like bland imitations of the styles of the dead masters; it seems that the spirits had lost a good deal of their distinctive talent passing over to the other side.

“Conversations With God” suggests that the deity, no less, has suffered a similar fate. You might dispute what’s found in the earlier books attributed to him (or her)–whether you read the Bible, the Koran or some other ancient volume–but at least they all said something vital, in a powerful voice. But the messages that God delivers in this movie, courtesy of author Neale Donald Walsch, who claims to be the divinity’s stenographer, so to speak, are all bromides of the most banal sort–the kind of stuff that wouldn’t have been out of place on Burma Shave signs (for those of you old enough to remember such things) or inside fortune cookies. It’s New Age-ism at its worst.

Of course, a movie needs not just to deliver a message, but to tell a story, and so “Conversations With God” is structured as a biographical sketch of Walsch’s own journey from despair to hope. After showing him, as played (quite well) by Henry Czerny, addressing a hall filled with admirers as a motivational speaker, it flashes back to a bleak period in the author’s life, when he found himself homeless after losing his job in the aftermath of an accident (he spends a good deal of time in a neck brace). Things seem to improve for him when he finds a gig as a radio announcer, but the closure of the station sends him into a downward spiral, ending in his questioning of God and his amazement with the deity replies. The upshot is his penning of the titular book, which gets the attention of a small publisher and then is bought for a substantial sum by a larger one, cementing Walsch’s career. And the film can conclude with passages from it, which are presented as direct transcriptions of God’s responses. But Walsch doesn’t portray himself as special in this regard; his message is that the deity talks to everyone, if only they’ll listen.

The problem, if one believes Walsch, is that what God has to say is pretty tepid stuff, comforting perhaps but terribly undemanding. And the biographical material is portrayed in so slow and desultory a fashion under Stephen Simon’s languid direction that despite Czerny’s earnestness, it grows quite tedious. Things perk up temporarily when Michael Goorjian shows up briefly as the program director at the radio station where Walsch gets his job–he adds some energy to the proceedings, even if it’s of an undisciplined sort–but otherwise the performances are mostly flat and rather amateurish. The production values, moreover, barely escape shoddiness.

Despite its obvious weaknesses “Conversations With God” will nonetheless satisfy New Agers, and as “What the Bleep Do We Know?” proved, there’s enough of an audience of them to support a relatively modest picture like this one. If you don’t already belong to the choir, though, the preaching isn’t likely to make much of an impression on you.

A-

The disastrous effect of the tolerance of clerical pedophiles by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church is made abundantly clear in this accusatory documentary by Amy Berg, which studies a single case as a horrifying example of the problem–that of Father Oliver O’Grady, a priest in the diocese of Stockton, California, who abused scores of youngsters of both sexes over the years when he was moved from parish to parish by Bishop Roger Mahony, who’s now cardinal of Los Angeles. O’Grady was eventually accused, tried and convicted, serving seven years in prison before being released and returning to his native Ireland. But the scars to his victims and their families remain, and the legal battles to secure some measure of justice for them has been one of the most embarrassing facts of life for the American church for the past two decades.

The story isn’t an unfamiliar one, and some of the material in “Deliver Us From Evil”–drawn from journalistic accounts and filmed court depositions–is fairly rote. It also doesn’t pretend to be objective, though a note at the end indicates that Berg did attempt–unsuccessfully–to interview church spokesmen as part of her coverage.

But two things make “Deliver Us From Evil” exceptional. One is the degree of personalization that’s achieved by concentrating on three victims–Ann Jyono, Nancy Sloan and Adam M.–and their guilt-ridden parents. The effect is shattering, especially when the camera settles on Ann’s father Bob, who’s faith in the clergy and in himself has obviously been destroyed by what happened.

The other, even more remarkable, is the extensive interview segments with O’Grady, a strange fellow, calm and reflective, who’s willing to acknowledge what he did, but in an oddly remote way that suggests he’s not even conscious of the horrors he’s confessing, and who remains so distant from reality that he actually hopes that sending handwritten letters to his victims, inviting them to a sort of reunion, will actually bring about reconciliation and closure. The footage of his depositions is unsettling enough, but seeing him talk one-on-one so casually about his actions is truly grotesque–but undeniably compelling.

Unfortunately, the film spends almost as much time on Father Tom Doyle, an American priest who’s long warned the church leadership of the extent of the problem and is shown aiding the California families in their efforts to get an apology from the Vatican (whose current leader, Benedict XVI, is portrayed none too flatteringly). Doyle’s an admirable fellow, but his interventions have a conventionality the rest of the film transcends.

Generally, however, though “Deliver Us From Deliver” is quite ordinary technically, it’s extraordinary in terms of content. And it provides insight into a subject that remains important not only to Catholics, who would be well advised not to ignore the story it tells even if they find it uncomfortable, but to society at large.