Scarlet's web: 'Our Fathers' on Showtime.

Our Fathers, premiering on the Showtime channel Saturday, May 21, dramatizes the Archdiocese of Boston's sexual-abuse scandal. Written by Thomas Michael Donnelly and directed by Dan Curtis (Winds of War), the film is based on David France's 2004 bestseller of the same title, which gave epic sweep to these dark events. Impressively researched, the book touched on many subjects: Vatican II, the politics of both Boston and the American Catholic Church, seminary education, the hopes and disappointments of sixties activism, the relationship of priests and nuns to the civil-rights movement, the involvement (frustrated or fulfilled) of the laity with church policies, and the attraction of homosexuals to careers in a church that condemns the practice of homosexuality. France admirably kept the multifarious matters pertinent to his central theme: the damage that can be done to a great institution by its own servants when they lose touch with the needs of the people the institution is meant to serve.

But a two-hour movie needs more compression than a six-hundred-page book. So scriptwriter Donnelly, in consultation with France (who served as executive producer), selected a few threads from the narrative and rendered them as scenes that would encapsulate the tragedy and provide sure-fire material for the director and the first-rate cast.

The theme of the film as opposed to the book is how evil festers when it is concealed. The focus is on four characters: the lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, whose representation of victims uncovered diocesan secrets and enabled the Boston Globe to break the story; the fictional character Angelo DeFranco, a composite of several of Garabedian's clients; Cardinal Bernard Law; and Fr. Dominic Spagnolia, a firebrand whose denunciations of Law's obscurantism may have been the real cause of Spagnolia's forced withdrawal from his parish, rather than the trumped-up charge of pedophilia for which he has yet to receive a formal hearing. The sex offenders are all briefly sketched; the most vivid one being John Geoghan, who comes across in the 1960s scenes as a repulsive young creep, and in the 2000s episodes as a pathetic wreck. (As the former, actor Damien Atkins, with his spookily dilated eyes, merits a nightmare or two.)

The legal-beagle stuff is written along such conventional movie lines that the heroism of the justice-seeking victims, for me at least, was somewhat vitiated. Although Ted Danson brings a fine jauntiness to his portrayal of Garabedian, the script burdens him with cliches--sexy secretary, tough but motherly office manager ("When ya gonna get a life, Mitch?"), disheveled bachelor apartment, a roguish gleam in the eyes for the ladies. Worse, the scene in which several victims recount their abuse to a victims' support group is staged and acted like one of those awful off-Broadway monologue plays in which actors spill their guts and shed a lot of ham fat by reciting woes directly to the audience. If Daniel Baldwin's DeFranco comes across as the most compelling victim, it is in part because he's not required to deliver any downstage-center histrionics, and partly because Baldwin seems convincingly sodden with grief. Hugh Thompson also does well as Tom Blanchette, who takes both rancor and forgiveness to the deathbed of his rapist, a few minutes electrified by complex pain and complex compassion.

But the most vivid characterizations are those of Law and Spagnolia. Not only do both men have complicated and sharply contrasting personalities, but Donnelly finds a disturbing linkage in their conduct, a linkage that both men would certainly abhor. It would take a combination of J. F. Powers and Dostoyevsky to do justice to these two (especially Spagnolia), but Donnelly's intelligent writing is stoutly aided by a pair of superb actors working at the top of their talents.

As portrayed by Christopher Plummer, Cardinal Bernard Law is a man with an aloof sensibility and an autocratic way of dealing with the world. The first time we see him, he's at the breakfast table and his housekeeper inquires if he needs anything more. His reply is not discourteous but he spares the old woman just enough breath to say no and not a vibration more. (If a spider could talk, it would sound just like Plummer.) Not much later, he mounts his pulpit to tell the congregation that the initial sex scandals are "not the fault of a caring church but the aberrant acts of one man." Though it will soon come out that there was more than one offender and that Law must have know this, his sermon, though it launches a cover-up, is neither unfeeling nor lacking in eloquence. He seems to think that the people in front of him should be spared, for the good of their souls, the emotional turbulence that the revelation of sex crimes would bring. After the truth comes out, the cardinal is granted opportunities to face and answer victims. Once again, Plummer's acting evokes the contrast between Law's ability to respond to groups and his meager behavior with individuals. Interviewed by peppery but needy victim Olan Horne (Chris Bauer) in the cardinal's own parlor, Plummer plays Law's heartiness as a mere barometer of inner panic. But, in the very next scene, when the cardinal goes with Horne to a support group where Law must face many resentful people, he seems to achieve a measure of sincere contrition and a willingness to hold himself accountable.

Or does he? The script questions this by soon bearing down on the Dominic Spagnolia case. Played to the hilt (and not a millimeter beyond) by Brian Dennehy, "Fr. Spags" is fire to Law's ice, all virtuous fury to the cardinal's reticence. When the priest denounces Law to his congregation in Lowell, Massachusetts, the cardinal and his advisers respond with an almost certainly trumped-up charge of child abuse against Spagnolia. The priest's congregation rallies so wholeheartedly to Spagnolia's support that the accusation seems about to make the activist priest more of a media hero than ever. At this point in the drama, Spagnolia's righteousness casts Law's actions into a purely vindictive light, and even the cardinal's attempts to meet the victims halfway become suspect.

But then a revelation suggests that Spagnolia may be as much a victim of his own impulsiveness and vainglory as of any ecclesiastical bullying. In the 1970s, he had left the priesthood temporarily and had had a lengthy homosexual affair, which he now dismisses all too blithely ("I was faithful; he wasn't. End of story."). Because of this "outing," Spagnolia leaves the priesthood. Though I believe that he will retain the audience's sympathy, Spagnolia finally appears less an antidote to Law's obscurantism than a fallen hero who has unconsciously mimicked the now-despised reticence of the officials he denounced. Still, the punishment meted out to Spagnolia suggests that the Boston hierarchy is trying to shift the blame for sheltering pedophile from itselfs to all homosexuals within the priesthood, no matter how decent or how sordid the behavior of individual homosexuals has been. It was the complexity of the Law-Spagnolia conflict, rather than the portrayal of pedophilia or the legal maneuvering, that stuck in my mind for weeks after I viewed the preview DVD.

Dan Curtis responded to his relatively limited budget and shooting schedule (thirty-three days) with adroit TV movie direction, by which I mean that he turned the small screen to advantage by shooting close to the actors and by cutting from face to face with empathy not only for the characters but for the viewers. He nearly always puts our eyes on the face we want to see at any given moment.

This is a movie most people--and all American Catholics--should see and argue about.